Investigation on the kinetics of infiltration of liquid aluminum into an alumina fibrous preform

The infiltration kinetics of liquid metal into a fibrous preform was analyzed theoretically on the basis of Darcy's law and the assumptions that the porous preform can be treated as `bundles of capillaries' and that the liquid flow penetrating the preform is laminar. Experiments in infiltration kinetics were carried out with respect to an Al-1.5 Mg aluminum alloy/alumina short fiber preform system. It was revealed that an incubation time is required to activate infiltration, that there is a parabolic dependence of the infiltrated depth on the infiltration time for an infiltration process under constant external pressure, and that the infiltration rate can be well predicted by the equation derived by the theoretical model proposed in the present paper. Both the incubation time and the infiltration rate are influenced significantly by the applied pressure.