Graphite And Its Valuable Properties

Graphite is very important material in engineering. And because of its specific properties, graphite finds very important applications areas to itself. In this content, we will explain these specific properties of graphite, and application areas below.

What Is Graphite?

Graphite shows two of specific properties and find itself applications according to its structure or form. But first of all graphite includes high content of carbon, and these carbon atoms make covalent bonding between themselves, which is strong bonding. There carbon molecules, align in the form of layers. Bonding type between these layers is weak van der waals bonding. So in powder form of that laytered structure of graphite shows very good lubricative property. This lubricative property comes from the weak bondings between layers, in which shear stress is very low to tear apart them. This property of grahite gives lubricative feature in most applications.

Another form of graphite is hexagonal planar. This molecular form gşves graphite to very high strength in certain directions. So this from of graphite is very important in fiber applications in high strength composite material. Strength direction can be adjusted according to the molecular orientation of used graphite in fiber composites. These composite applications include, tennis rackets and aircraft components.

Graphite has 2.22 g/cm^3 density in theory, but it has actually around 1.7 g/cm^3 of density in real life. This is because, graphite has porous structure.

Tensile strength of graphite increases with increasing temperature. Because of this, graphite can be used in high temperature applications. But there is a drawback of graphite for high temperature applications; Graphite oxidizes at around 500 celsius degrees. In vacuum, graphite parts can work up to 3000 celsius degrees. 3727 celsius degrees is the sublimation temperature of graphite.

With the decreasing size of grain elements, graphite can be much more stronger material like ceramics.

So graphite is very versatile material according to its form. Do not forget to leave your comments and questions about ‘Graphite’ and its applications and properties below. Your feedback is very important for us.