Analysis of the Influence of Contaminants on Microhardness Sintered Boron Carbide Samples

Abstract

This work presents ANOVA and Tukey’s statistic tests that were carried out in Knoop microhardness results of boron carbide sintered samples. Three samples, A, B and C, of different processing conditions were tested and statistical analysis showed that microhardness results are strongly influenced by porosity and chemical composition, mainly due to presence of C_(2H) and WB_2.5 contaminant phases. Those phases promoted higher densification in A and B samples and it was found that A ? B > C is the relation between the microhardness results of the samples, while A ? B < C is the porosity ratio of the samples. Furthermore, this work aims to apply a statistical tool to evaluate the microhardness results performed on advanced ceramics and, using these results, to control parameters in the sintering process, showing that a deeper statistical analysis is necessary for the interpretation and validation of the results merit.