Predictive Process Control of Crowded Particulate Suspensions

Written for ceramic process managers, engineers and technicians, this book covers the cause-and-effect relationships between fundamental particle physics of powders, fundamental interparticle chemistry in suspensions, and the resulting rheology of crowded suspensions. It then applies these fundamentals to ceramic-forming processes and explains why variations in performance occur and how to correct for them. Predictive Process Control (PPC) is an approach to identifying variations in the properties of raw materials used in ceramic manufacturing and controlling the response of a ceramic composition before it is released to production. Compared to the old method of constant amounts of varying raw materials, this method provides constant percentages of key properties of those raw materials. It has been tested to good effect with very substantial improvement in quality and percent yield, and it is also being used to profile raw material deposits for future exploitation.This authoratative and comprehensive reference on PPC should be a useful resource for technical managers, production engineers and technicians in any manufacturing enterprise which utilizes crowded particulate suspensions.