The goal of this semester project is to quantify the carbon content of a two-phase system, sintered with an ultrafast sintering technique called Electro-Sinter Forging (ESF). ESF is a process in which the combination of a pressure pulse and an electrical discharge produce the sintering of electrically conductive powder preforms. It is very energetic and ultrafast (less than one second), and as a result can produce structures that are rarely seen elsewhere, with a microstructure that is often out of thermodynamic equilibrium. This process is owned by a company, EPoS Sintering, accessible here: https://www.eposintering.com/.
The material of interest in this project contains Ti and TiC precipitates. Different ESF sintering cycles and studies of resulting Ti/TiC in-situ composite materials have been already realized. This project aims to precisely quantify how much carbon is in solid solution in the titanium matrix, by analysing the position of Ti peaks in an X-ray diffractogram. The student will need to search the literature for existing data, create and test calibration samples and compare measured and theoretical equilibrium carbon concentration values.
The project will be entirely conducted at EPFL, in the LMM. The work will combine a study of the relevant literature, learning how to conduct X-ray diffraction experiments, together with the production and characterization of equilibrated Ti/TiC samples. This project is opened to a bachelor student or a master student.
Contact: Gaëtan Denis – [email protected]