Boron Carbide Ceramics Prepared By Gelcasting And Pressureless Sintering

In this paper, we report out recent advance on aqueous gelcasting and pressureless sintering of B4C. The sintering additives of carbon and SiC were selected. The sintering kinetics was investigated and optimized for obtaining high performance ceramics with effective control of the shrinkage and density evolution during sintering. B4C ceramics can be densified with the relative density around 97.5%. The microstructure development and resulting properties of the final sintered sample were presented.