Chapters authored
Electrical Resistivity of Powdered Porous Compacts
In this chapter, the problem of the electrical conduction in powdered systems is analyzed. New equations for computing the effective electrical resistivity of metallic powder aggregates and sintered compacts are proposed. In both cases, the effective electrical resistivity is a function of the bulk material resistivity, the sample porosity and the tap porosity of the starting powder. Additional parameters are required to describe the case of non-sintered powder aggregates: one of them describes a certain residual resistivity and another describes the rate of mechanical descaling during compression of the oxide layers covering the particles. Laws for the thermal dependence of these two parameters are also suggested. These new equations modeling the effective electrical resistivity are valid in all the physical range of porosity: from zero porosity to the tap porosity. Links between the proposed equations and the percolation conduction theory are stated. The proposed equations have been experimentally validated with powder aggregates (both in as-received state and after electrical activation to eliminate oxide layers) and sintered compacts of different metallic powders, resulting in a very good agreement with theoretical predictions. In addition to their general interest, the proposed models can be of great interest in modeling electrical consolidation techniques.
Part of the book: Electrical and Electronic Properties of Materials