Negative impact of humidity on the flowability of steel powders

Atmospheric humidity is introduced into powders during handling, transportation, and storage. High moisture content can increase cohesive forces between particles and make it difficult to spread a powder into thin layers in powder bed processes or to fill a mold in processes such as press-and-sinter. Furthermore, water can cause porosity and uptake of oxygen in the final component, damaging its mechanical properties. In this study, a Freeman FT4 powder rheometer was placed inside a climate chamber. Both flowability and shear tests were performed on four steel powders under a range of humidity and temperatures. Basic flowability energy and specific energy were both found to increase significantly with humidity (typically increase by 50% for 80% of relative humidity compared to dry conditions) and were insensitive to temperature change (10-30 degrees C). Conversely, the behavior of the powders under shear was neither sensitive to relative humidity nor temperature. Measurements of moisture content revealed that finer powders contained more moisture than coarser ones, but the moisture content was not correlated with humidity, probably due to shortcomings with the measurement method. This knowledge can be used to optimize powder processing conditions.