Quantitative Analysis of Microstructure and Modeling of Sintering

Microstructure is the key scale to understand and describe sintering mechanisms and their consequences at the macroscopic level. As modeling techniques are continuously developing, the need for input data and comparison with more and more accurate descriptions of the evolution is expected to create a growing demand for quantitative microstructure data. Image analysis is the classic way to get these data. This paper reviews the practical use and progresses of this old technique in the sintering literature during the past and recent years. The place of basic tools and more recent ones, such as 3D imaging, are discussed from a practical point of view accounting from sintering models needs: mean size and size distributions in pores and grains, homogeneity, sintering trajectories…