Infiltration of Liquid Metals in Porous Compacts: Modeling of Permeabilities During Reactive Melt Infiltration

Reactive infiltration is a fast and cost-effective technique for manufacturing ceramic-matrix composites (CMCs). CMCs are used in elevated temperature applications like rocket engine casings, jet nozzles, gas turbine blades and nuclear cladding. There is an urgent need for minimizing experimental costs as well as optimizing process parameters during manufacture, so that we have minimized manufacturing costs and reduced infiltration times. Towards this end, the objective of this research was to develop an integrated micro-macro model of reactive flow of molten silicon in a porous preform consisting of carbon-coated silicon carbide fibers and then optimize process parameters computationally. The overall objective of the research was to arrive at a modified equation of Darcy's law for flow through a porous medium with the help of numerical/computational modeling. This paper deals with the flow of silicon through porous carbon at the macro level. The macro flow of silicon was integrated with an available micro model by determining the transient porosity from the micro model and using it in Darcy's law written for the macro flow of silicon. From the results of this study, we recommend suitable process parameters such as initial temperature of the solid reactant and the specific kind of reactants to be used for achieving complete infiltration. These conclusions are drawn after observation of the rate of decrease of permeability with more reaction.