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Properties and Fracture Mechanism of Composite Plaster Mold Covered with Multiple Adhesion Layer for Investment Casting

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Abstract

In order to improve the physical properties of plaster molds for investment casting, a composite mold was produced by applying multiple adhesion layers onto the surface of a polypropylene fiber-reinforced plaster mold. The adhesion layers were deposited using silica sol as adhesive, and refractory materials of different fineness (mullite powders and zircon sand) served as sand particles. The effects of adhesion layer numbers (1–3 layers) on strength, permeability and thermal conductivity of plaster mold were investigated. Fracture surfaces were observed by SEM, whereas phase composition and microstructure were analyzed via XRD and Raman spectroscopy. The results revealed the optimum permeability of a single-layer mold. In particular, the permeability of green and fired specimens achieved 10.8 and 17.6, respectively, being more than twice that of non-fiber specimens. In turn, double-layer composite molds had the maximum strength performance at which the green flexure strength reached 2.85 MPa. On the contrary, the strength performance of a triple-layer system was reduced, but the thermal conductivity was improved significantly, exhibiting the thermal conductivity coefficient of up to 0.3657 W/m K. The adhesion layer was chemically bonded to the plaster matrix, and the fracture mode of the plaster mold was transformed into a mixed fracture. When subjected to an external force, axial cracks emerged in the interfaces between different layers of the composite mold, leading to a sequence of fractures throughout the layers. Volume shrinkage occurred after the silica sol mixture was solidified, causing microcracks in the adhesion layer. Those cracks provided the migration channels for gas evacuation in the mold, which was conducive to improvement in permeability and thermal conductivity of the composite mold.

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (Grant No. 2020MS05024), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Universities (Grant No. JY20220270) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51865042).

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  1. Yan Lu, Kai Lü and Jie Li are contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Technology, Inner Mongolia University of Technology, Hohhot, 010051, China

    Yan Lu, Haiyang Shi, Kai Lü, Jie Li, Yanfen Li & Weidong Chen

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  1. Yan Lu
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  2. Haiyang Shi
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  3. Kai Lü
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Correspondence to Yan Lu, Kai Lü or Jie Li.

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Lu, Y., Shi, H., Lü, K. et al. Properties and Fracture Mechanism of Composite Plaster Mold Covered with Multiple Adhesion Layer for Investment Casting. Inter Metalcast 18, 1770–1782 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40962-023-01152-0

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