Characterizing flowability of metal powders

Abstract: Powder metallurgy is a growing field with much potential. The core purpose and problem in this work is attempting to describe and understand what and how metal powder properties impact powder flowability. Several powder flow experiments have been performed on eight different metal powders with varying size and of material types to examine correlations and seeing what parameters are important for a well flowing metal powder. Experiments performed consists of hall flow, tap density, angle of repose and a more complex Rheometer analysis. The results found display plenty correlations between different experiments with some deviations as expected due to the nature of occurring errors. The results are all displayed in tables comparing the different metal powders for all experiments. The powder with the best flowability (highly free flowing) scored best across all experiments and tests indicating all tests as significant. A well and free flowing powder is characterized by low values in cohesion, angle of repose, specific energy, etc.