Whisker reinforced glass ceramic

摘要

The process for making an in-situ whisker reinforced glass-ceramic that is up to 1.5 times as strong as conventional glass-ceramics was developed at Virginia Tech and patented in 1993. This technology has been identified as having commercial potential for use in high temperature heat exchanger applications for the electric power generation field by the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT). This technology was licensed by MATVA, Inc., a small Virginia business, for further development. In particular, the goal of this project was to develop a property database and conduct initial testing of heat exchanger prototypes to demonstrate its potential application. This final report describes how the glass precursor was formed, physical properties of the glass-ceramic, techniques for making heat exchanger prototypes.