Patent CA-1197269-A (CA)
Inventor: BACHE HANS H
IPC: C04B14/02
Filed: 1981-05-15
Granted: 1985-11-26
Abstract: Shaped Article and Composite Material and Method for Producing Same.          ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE.            Shaped articles with a coherent matrix comprising homogeneously arranged bodies (A) of a size of from about 50 .ANG. to about 0.5 µm, such as silica dust particles, and densely packed bodies or par-ticles (B) having a size of the order of from 0.5 - 100 µm and being at least one order of magnitude larger than the respective particles or bodies A, such as Portland cement particles, and op-tionally aditionally comprising, embedded in the matrix, solid par-ticles (C) of a material having a strength exceeding that of or-dinary sand and stone used for ordinary concrete, such as re-fractory grade bauxite, the particles A being homogeneously di-stributed, especially densely packed, in the void volume between the particles B, are made from an easily flowable composite material containing a very low amount of liquid such as water and an ex-tremely high amount of a dispersing agent such as a concrete superplasticizer. Test specimens comprising Portland cement/silica dust matrix with refractory grade bauxite embedded therein have higher compressive strength than hitherto reported for any cement-based matrix, which means that the matrix material makes it pos-sible to construct larger structures (328) with size in excess of what is possible with known structural materials such as high quality concrete (326) and structural steel. Portland cement-based material may be used as a replacement for plastic, glass and steel such as for tools for making automobile steel body parts by com-pression.            More generally, a new class of material is disclosed, not limited to cement systems, where the fundamental principle is utilization of known geometric and kinematic principles for arrangement of larger bodies or particles in desired configuration relative to each other, in particular dense packing, in systems of fine particles or bodies which are 1 - 2 orders of magnitude finer than the body or particle systems in which it has so far been possible to benefit from k nowledge of large body geometry and kinematics, overcoming, by means of dispersing agent, the locking surface forces between adjacent bodies which hitherto prevented bodies or particles of micro og submicro size to be arranged densely according to pure geometric and kinematic principles.            Application of these principles permits production of a variety of new materials of hitherto unknown high quality such as high per-formance fiber/metal matrix composites where the compressive strength and abrasion resistance of the metal matrix is strongly improved by introducing submicro particles A which is made pos-sible by the particle arrangement principle where locking surface forces have been overcome. In spite of a high content of fibers such as 50% by volume of high strength very thin fibers in the 5 -10 micron range, densely packed particles A may be introduced by shaping the particle/fiber system with an auxiliary vehicle such as water which is then substituted with the final inter-particle sub-stance such as a metal in a subsequent process such as infiltration.