Mechanical properties of spark plasma sintered FeAl intermetallics

A recently developed powder metallurgy processing technique - Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) was employed to produce specimens from gas atomized Fe-43at.%Al powder sieved into different size fractions. First, the sintering process parameters were optimised. When sintered under these optimised parameters, the different feedstock powder size fractions do not cause significant differences in microhardness and fracture toughness. Sintering temperatures below 950 degrees C are not sufficient to provide complete densification of the material. From the fractographic point of view, a change from interparticle decohesion to a mixture of interparticle decohesion and transgranular cleavage fracture with predominance of interparticle decohesion was observed with increasing sintering temperature from 950 to 1000 degrees C. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.