Studies on the fabrication ofaluminium bonded boron carbide rings

The paper deals with a specific fabrication aspect of aluminium-bonded boron carbide. The objective has been to fabricate ring-shaped sintered bodies of boron carbide using about 30 wt% of aluminium as binder. Such special forms of boron carbide hold prospects for application as nuclear shut-down rods or control rods. The cold-pressing and sintering, and hot-pressing procedures have been explored as possible methods of fabrication. The hot-pressing route has been established as more suited, and such hot-pressed rings have been found to withstand a load of well over 1 ton whilst failing at loads over 3 tons and they have a high impact resistance. Some of the representative sintered rings have been observed on a scanning electron microscope. This has been useful towards making some general observations on the hot-pressed shapes of boron carbide aluminium-bonded material. (Auth.)