The Powder Metallurgy Of Porous Metals And Alloys Having A Controlled Porosity

INTRODUCTION THE high temperatures encountered in the operation of jet engines have imposed most drastic requirements upon the materials used in their construction. There are two different approaches to the materials problem connected with the design of parts in contact with high temperature gases. The first approach is to use a material which will perform satisfactorily at a temperature comparable to that of the gas. The second approach is to use a cooling system so that the material is maintained at a temperature appreciably lower than that of the gas. Besides the conventional method .of cooling by means of a liquid in contact with the material exposed to a high rate of heat transfer, a less orthodox method consists of making the part to be cooled of a porous material, so that the cooling fluid can be forced through the pores. In this scheme, the temperature of the coolant moving in a direction opposite to that of the heat flow increases gradually while passing through the porous material, and the coolant forms a protective layer on the surface exposed to heat. This method, referred to as "sweat cooling," was proposed at the jet Propulsion Laboratory in September 1944, and the experimental work on the preparation of porous metals was started early in 1945. The sweat cooling method opens new lines of research in powder metallurgy by extending the field of application of porous metals. The porous metals available at the present time are used mostly as bearings or filters, and a rather limited number of alloys are made for these applications. In addition, the fabrication of bearings or filters does not require a very dose control of the permeability, while in the case of sweat cooling such a control is of primary importance. In designing a sweat cooled part it is imperative to assure a given rate of flow of coolant under certain conditions of pressure drop. Generally, the proper pressure drop and the rate of flow of coolant are deduced from heat transfer and design considerations, and consequently the permeability of the porous metal to be used is also determined. It is therefore necessary for the designer to have available a continuous series of porous metals covering a range of permeability as wide as possible. Contrary to the requirements established in the fabrication of filters, the actual pore size of a porous metal intended for sweat cooling is of little consequence, except for its effect on permeability. The tensile strength is likely to be of great importance for some applications. Since the tensile strength of a porous alloy decreases with increasing porosity, an important problem is to develop porous alloys having the maximum permeability with minimum porosity.