Additive manufacturing of ceramics: Mobility of ceramic grains during printing

In summary, our study is motivated by the AM process Robocast, in which the final product is highly influenced by the grain orientation within the printout. For the reason we studied grain motion within the paste under conditions appearing during the printing process. For our study, we focused on a multimaterial system consisting of platelets and spheres. For a system of only platelets, we found that their orientation is mainly governed by the aspect ratio and not by the filling fraction. The effect is dominant for aspects ratios re >10. Introducing another material by adding spheres, the second finding, hinders the movement of platelets and therefore lowers the overall degree orientation for the platelets. Here, in contrast, the filling fraction of platelets does matter: The more platelets in the system, the higher the filling fraction of spheres can be while having an orientation of platelets.