The current investigation presents porous ceramic materials prepared with cenospheres (CS) by using spark plasma sintering. The impact of sintering temperature, mould diameter (20, 30 and 50 mm) and cenosphere size on the properties of the sintered material was investigated. Shrinkage of the samples during sintering started at 900 °C. Total sample shrinkage during sintering increases with increasing temperature and decreases with increasing mould size; increasing sample sintering temperature increases the apparent density of all sample series CS 63-150 µm in a 20 mm mould from 0.97 to 2.3 g·cm-3 at 1050-1300 °C; in a 30 mm mould, 0.81-1.87 g·cm-3 at 1050-1200 °C; in 50 mm mould, 0.54-0.75 g·cm-3 at 1050-1150 °C; while CS 150-250 µm in a 20 mm mould is 0.93-1.96 g·cm-3 at 1050-1200 °C. Total porosity decreases from 61.5% to 3.9% by increasing sintering temperature from 1050 to 1250 °C, while open porosity reduces at lower temperatures, with closed porosity being highest in samples sintered at 1150 °C. When the sintering temperature increases from 1050 to 1300 °C, the compressive strength of the CS 63-150 samples produced in a 20 mm mould increases from 11 MPa to 312 MPa. These results correlate with the Rice model, which describes an exponential dependence of compressive strength on material porosity and fully dense material compressive strength.
Keywords: SiO2; XRD; apparent density; cenospheres; compressive strength; matrixless syntactic foam; porosity; shrinkage; spark plasma sintering.