Improvement of Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of SiC–VC System Obtained by Electroconsolidation
This study examines the influence of vanadium carbide (VC) on the physical and mechanical properties of SiC-VC composites fabricated by a modified spark plasma sintering (SPS) method at a uniaxial pressure of 45 MPa. It was found that the addition of 40 wt.% VC into the SiC matrix led to a substantial reduction in porosity from ca. 30% to less than 8.2% and caused enhancement of the properties. Fracture toughness increased from 2.9 to 7.0 MPa·m<sup>1/2</sup>, and hardness rose from 2.9 to 22.6 GPa. In the SiC-VC system, vanadium carbide acted as a grain growth inhibitor and particulate reinforcement. A sintering temperature increase from 1900 °C to 2000 °C resulted in a ~70% improvement in hardness and a ~50% gain in fracture toughness. The results highlighted the critical balance between densification parameters and microstructural stability. Utilization of n-dimensional vector space of material features, Mahalanobis distance, and Pareto trade-off optimization helped to describe the features of the newly obtained composites and to optimize the manufacturing process.
Authors
- Waldemar Samociuk (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1095-0651)
- Jolanta Natalia Latosińska (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9147-4484)
- Mirosław Rucki (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7666-7686)
- T. O. Kosenchuk (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-8181-6039)
- Volodymyr Pavlovych Nerubatskyi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4309-601X)
- T. Szumiata (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0430-4805)
- Jacek Caban (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7546-8703)
- Volodymyr Chyshkala (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8634-4212)
- É. S. Gevorkyan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0521-3577)
- Zbigniew Krzysiak (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4950-7481)
- V. V. Ivzhenko
Institutions
- University of Life Sciences in Lublin (PL)
- Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (LT)
- Kazimierz Pułaski University of Technology and Humanities in Radom (PL)
- Ukrainian State University of Railway Transport (UA)
- V. Bakul Institute for Superhard Materials (UA)
- Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (PL)
- Lublin University of Technology (PL)
- V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (UA)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Materials
- Published
- 2025-09-16
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/ma18184331
- Primary Topic
- Advanced ceramic materials synthesis
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00