Ceramic fiber rope

Fiberfrax [Carborundum]. TM for ceramic fiber made from alumina and silica. Available in bulk as blown, chopped and washed, long staple, paper, rope, roving, blocks. 

RCF is sold in a variety of forms, such as loose fiber, blanket, boards, modules, cloth, cements, putties, paper, coatings, felt, vacuum-formed shapes, rope, braid, tape, and textiles. The products are principally used for industrial appHcations as insulation in furnaces, heaters, kiln linings, furnace doors, metal launders, tank car insulation, and other uses up to 1400°C. RCF-consuming industries include ferrous and nonferrous metals, petrochemical, ceramic, glass, chemical, fertiH2er, transportation, constmction, and power generation/incineration. Some newer uses include commercial fire protection and appHcations in aerospace, eg, heat shields and automotive, eg, catalytic converters, metal reinforcement, heat shields, brake pads, and airbags. 

Hierarchy can be described in analogy to rope (stretched polymer molecules in domains that make up nanofibers, combined to microwhiskers, bundled into fibers that are spun into yarn that is twined to make up the rope). Wood and tendon are biological examples that have six or more hierarchical levels. Compared to these, fiber-reinforced matrix composites made up of simple massive fibers embedded in a metallic, ceramic, or polymer matrix are primitive. Hierarchical inorganic materials, as discussed in Chapter 7, can be made with processes for fractal-like solid products spinodal decomposition, diffusion-limited growth, particle precipitation from the vapor, and percolation. Fractal-like solids have holes and clusters of all sizes and are therefore hierarchical if the interactions... 

Aluminum oxides and related compounds have long been technologically important as abrasives (corundum) and in refractories and ceramics in the a-crystalline modification. In the y modification, a more open, defect structure, aluminum oxide becomes activated alumina and is useful in chromatography and in catalysis. A third modification occurs on the surface of the metal on exposure to air and serves as the well-known protective oxide. A more recent technological achievement is the production of remarkably uniform cylindrical fibers of AI2O3. These fibers can be incorporated in a variety of fabrics, papers, ropes, and so on, which gain the advantage of stability to very... 

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