Experimental and numerical investigation of the effect of metal powder particle size on the physical and mechanical properties of the components produced by high rate dynamic powder compaction

The effect of size distribution of metal powder particles on the density and strength of fabricated parts under high velocity impact loading has been investigated in this paper. Experiments have been performed on aluminum powder using gas gun apparatus. To do so, pure aluminum powder with three different sizes has been compacted and both density and strength of compacts have been compared. The obtained results show that the coarsest particle size, has the maximum value of density. To evaluate the effect of mixing powder particles with different size distributions on properties of compacts, three initial powders with different weight ratios have been mixed together. The obtained results show that the density of composite part increases as the content of powder with greater particle sizes increases, but this has no particular effect on strength. Next, a mathematical modelling using neural network method has been presented to predict the density of compacts. Through this method, obtained experimental values are used as input by the neural network method. Comparison of values predicted using this model with those obtained by experiments, represents an appropriate level of adjustment.