Porosity is a characteristic present in most sintered materials, full densification only being achieved in special cases. For some sintered materials, porosity is indeed a desired characteristic, serving for the intended application of the material. In any case, the porosity present in materials can have a strong effect on some of their properties, both structural and functional. In this paper, some of the expressions proposed to describe the influence of the total porosity on the effective properties of sintered materials are examined. Moreover, a universal expression (with two fitting parameters) valid to satisfactorily represent all the analysed behaviours is proposed. One of these parameters can be assimilated to the tap porosity of the powders used to manufacture the material. The properties examined were elastic moduli, ultimate strength, thermal and electrical conductivities, magnetic characteristics, and other properties directly related to these ones. The study is valid for sintered materials, both metallic and ceramic, with a homogeneous and non-texturised microstructure.

A novel processing method for amorphous Al₅₀Ti₅₀ alloy, obtained by mechanical alloying and subsequently consolidated by electrical resistance sintering, has been investigated. The characterisation of the powders and the confirmation of the presence of amorphous phase have been carried out by laser diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry and transmission electron microscopy. The amorphous Al₅₀Ti₅₀ powders, milled for 75 h, have a high hardness and small plastic deformation capacity, not being possible to achieve green compacts for conventional sintering. Moreover, conventional sintering takes a long time, being not possible to avoid crystallisation. Amorphous powders have been consolidated by electrical resistance sintering. Electrically sintered compacts with different current intensities (7–8 kA) and processing times (0.8–1.6 s) show a porosity between 16.5 and 20%. The highest Vickers hardness of 662 HV is reached in the centre of an electrically sintered compact with 8 kA and 1.2 s from amorphous Al₅₀Ti₅₀ powder. The hardness results are compared with the values found in the literature.

This paper focuses on the microstructural characterization of Al₂₅Ti₇₅, Al₃₇Ti₆₃, Al₅₀Ti₅₀, Al₆₃Ti₃₇and Al₇₅Ti₂₅powders mixtures prepared by mechanical alloying (MA). The high-energy ball-milling, up to 75 h, of aluminium and titanium powders leads to a nanocrystalline or an amorphous structure. It is showed that a stable amorphous Al–Ti phase with uniform elemental distribution forms after 50 h of milling in Al₅₀Ti₅₀alloy. Heat treatment of the different alloys leads to the crystallization of AlTi₃, AlTi, Al₂Ti and Al₃Ti intermetallic compounds. A comprehensive study by laser granulometry, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was carried out on the structure, surface morphology and thermal behaviour of the MA Al-Ti mixtures, both of milled and heat treated powders.