WEAR BEHAVIOUR OF SOME MULLITE BASED CERAMIC COUPLES

In the last few decades, ceramics have found their way in many engineering and aeroneutical applications. The types, origin and methods of ceramic preparation have shown to largely affect the chemical, physical, mechanical and tribological behaviour of used ceramic. This work aims to prepare dense mullite-based ceramic bodies from the available raw materials. The effect of batch composi-tion and firing temperature on the densification and phase composition of the prepared bodies is herein discussed. Results have confirmed that dense mullite-based ceramics can be produced by firing clay-alumina-talc-albite upto 1500°C without any addi-tional mineralizers. The present work gives also a particular consideration to the relative wear between attained ceramic bodies under pure slid-ing conditions to assess the contribution of mullite formation on the ceramic wear mechanism. Low firing temperature results softer ceramic bodies with higher wear rates.