ABSTRACT
In-situ neutron diffraction measurements have been performed on IMI-24 grade (20% porosity) and PG25 (48% porosity) graphite subjected to external uni-axial compression loading. The ‘pore free’ matrix properties such as modulus of elasticity of about 72 GPa and 46 GPa were measured for the IMI-24 and PG25, respectively, and were higher than those measured at the macro-length-scale. The elastic modulus of each crystal plane, hkl, is reported ranging from about 48–145 GPa and Poisson ratio ranging from 0.08–0.28 for IMI-24 graphite. With the proposed method, the pore morphology factor ‘m’ was independently evaluated to be 10.8 and 4.8 for IMI-24 and PG25, respectively. It has been demonstrated from that the micro-diffraction the Young modulus is not dependent on the pore morphology factor. We consider and discuss the experimental plus modelling approach to provide a new perspective on the micro-mechanics of porous graphites.
Acknowledgement
We are pleased to acknowledge the benefit of technical discussions with Professor David Smith who died as a result of tragic climbing accident during the earlier period of this research. Professor Mark Daymod (Queens’ University, Canada) for Neutron Diffraction analysis. The work has benefitted from beam time allocated in Engine X facilities, ISIS, Rutherford, Oxford, UK. Dr Anna Paradowska (at ANSTO, Australia), Professor Bo Chen (at Leicester University, UK) are kindly acknowledge for ND experiment support.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.