TERNARY PACKING OF SIC AND DIAMOND PARTICLES IN ETHANOL

Particle packing techniques employing a liquid phase were used for pre paration of dense disks of SiC and diamond particulates. Forty-one SiC and fifteen diamond compositions in the ternary-component particle sy stems were used to determine the optimum percentages of coarse, medium , and fine particles for achieving high packing densities: over 80% fo r SiC and over 62% for diamond. High packing densities were achieved w ithout vibration by simply mixing the three size fractions in ethanol followed by stirring during the initial evaporation stage. The packing density results for SiC were successfully correlated with the percent ages of the coarse and fine particles using multiple regression analys is; however, the data for diamond could not be similarly correlated wi th particle composition because the experimental work was done in a na rrow range of compositions and the range of packing densities was smal l.