Effect of the heating rate on the thermal explosion behavior and oxidation resistance of 3D-structure porous NiAl intermetallic

Porous NiAl intermetallic compounds demonstrate great potential in various applications by their high porosity and excellent oxidation resistance. However, to obtain a controllable NiAl intermetallic structure by tuning different process parameters remains unclear. In this work, porous NiAl intermetallic compounds were fabricated by economic and energy-saving thermal explosion (TE) reaction. The relationship between microstructure and process parameters was revealed using three-dimensional X-ray microscopy (3D-XRM) with high resolution and non-destructive characteristics. The geometrical features and quantitative statistics of the porous NiAl obtained at different heating rates (2, 10, 20 °C min−1) were compared. The result of the closed porosity calculation showed that a lower heating rate (2 °C min−1) promoted the Kirkendall reaction between Ni and Al, resulting in a high closed porosity (5.25%). However, at a higher heating rate (20 °C min−1), a homogeneous NiAl phase was observed using the threshold segmentation method, indicating uniform and complete TE reaction can be achieved at a high heating rate. The result of the 3D fluid simulation showed that the sample heated at 10 °C min−1 had the highest permeability (2434.6 md). In this study, we systematically investigated the relationship between the heating rates and properties of the porous NiAl intermetallic, including the phase composition, porosity, exothermic mechanism, oxidation resistance, and compression resistance. Our work provides constructive directions for designing and tailoring the performance of porous NiAl intermetallic compounds.