Novel Processing of Porous Titanium Composite for Producing Open Cell Structure

Processing technique to produce open-cell porous titanium composite was developed. One of the outstanding benefits of porous titanium composite is both physical and mechanical properties can be controlled widely by changing the metal/ceramic fraction and cell structures. In this work, porous titanium composite was fabricated by a chemical reaction between titanium powder and boron carbide (B4C) powder. The reactions between titanium and B4C generates a large amount of latent heat and, therefore, it was a combustion and self-propagating mode. Precursors were made by compacting the starting powder blend (Ti and B4C), and heated in an induction furnace to induce the reaction. The reaction was strongly exothermic and, therefore, the precursor was sintered by its latent heat when the Ti/B4C blending ratio was appropriate. The reaction products were titanium boride (TiB and/or TiB2) and titanium carbide (TiC). By controlling the Ti/B4C blending ratio, it was possible to control the volume fraction of reaction products in titanium matrix. The combustion synthesized titanium composite was porous and its cell structure was strongly affected by the processing condition of the precursor (porosity and Ti/B4C blending ratio). High porosity with open pores was obtained with small Ti/B4C ratios and high porosity of the precursor, while the cell structure was closed and spherical with high Ti/B4C ratio. The cell-wall size was varied from several tens of microns to about 500 microns by changing the combustion temperature.