Strength and elasticity of bimodal porous silica prepared from water glass

The bending strength and the Young’s modulus of bimodal porous silica gels having different porosity were evaluated. The porosity of the gel increased by aging the gel under basic conditions, and decreased with increasing the calcination temperature. The mesopores disappeared on calcination at 1,050 °C, whereas continuous macropores retained their morphology up to 1,050 °C for all the samples. Both the bending strength and the Young’s modulus of the bimodal porous silica gels were expressed as power-law functions of the bulk density, and no effect of bimodal pore structures on mechanical properties was observed. We also found linear correlation between the bending strength and the elasticity. The bimodal porous silica had higher strength and elastic modulus compared with other porous materials at the same porosity probably due to the presence of homogeneous micrometer-scale macropores.