A Novel Method for Measuring Elastic Modulus of Foundry Silicate Binders

This article develops a novel method for measuring the elastic modulus of hardened silicate binders for foundry cores. We measured hardened silicate binder within the original dimensions of the binder bridges with a nanoindenter. The influence of varying hardening times and temperatures on the elastic modulus was studied. This work aims at modelling and simulating the microstructure of sand core materials. In order to develop a computational model, which determines the mechanical properties of inorganically bound sand, one needs to measure these properties for the hardened inorganic binder itself.