Civil and Environmental Engineering Publications
Measurement and model on thermal properties of sintered diamond composites
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2013
Journal
JOURNAL OF ALLOYS AND COMPOUNDS
Volume
551
First Page
636
URL with Digital Object Identifier
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jallcom.2012.11.025
Last Page
642
Abstract
A prelude to the thermal management of grinding processes is measurement of the thermal properties of working materials. Indeed, tool materials must be chosen not only for their mechanical properties (abrasion performance, lifetime...) but also for thermal concerns (thermal conductivity) for efficient cooling that avoids excessive temperatures in the tool and workpiece. Sintered diamond is currently used for grinding tools since it yields higher performances and longer lifetimes than conventional materials (mineral or silicon carbide abrasives), but its thermal properties are not yet well known. Here the thermal conductivity, heat capacity and density of sintered diamond are measured as functions of the diamond content in composites and for two types of metallic binders: hard tungsten-based and soft cobalt-based binders. The measurement technique for thermal conductivity is derived from the flash method. After pulse heating, the temperature of the rear of the sample is measured with a noncontact method (infrared camera). A parameter estimation method associated with a three-layer nonstationary thermal model is used to obtain sample thermal conductivity, heat transfer coefficient and absorbed energy. With the hard metallic binder, the thermal conductivity of sintered diamond increased by up to 64% for a diamond content increasing from 0 to 25%. The increase is much less for the soft binder: 35% for diamond volumes up to 25%. In addition, experimental data were found that were far below the value predicted by conventional analytical models for effective thermal conductivity. A possible explanation is poor heat transfer at the diamond-binder interface. Indeed, better agreement between measurements and model was found by taking into account a thermal contact resistance between matrix and diamond particles equal to 0.75 and 1.25 x 10 (6) m(2) KW (1) for respectively the cobalt- and tungsten-based composites. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.