Using nanoscaled powder as an additive in coarse-grained powder

Nanoscaled Al2O3 powder is used as additive in coarse-grained Al2O3 green b odies. Its influence on the green density is investigated. The potential ef fect of powder mixing on the green density is described by a model for mult imodal powder mixtures that predicts the powder composition for maximum gre en body density. The model is applied to bimodal and trimodal mixtures with one of the components being nanopowder. The calculated relative densities are compared with experimental results. Furthermore, sintering experiments are conducted to investigate the influence of the amount of nanoscaled powd er on the sintered densities of bimodal bodies.