Computer Simulation of Liquid Phase Sintering: Gravity Induced Skeletal Structure Evolution – A Review

This paper summarizes and reviews a number of important theoretical and experimental results connected to study of gravitational effects on liquid phase sintering. However, we will also investigate numerically gravity induced skeletal structure evolution during liquid phase sintering. Applying domain methodology, solid skeleton evolution will be introduced by definition of skeleton units determined by equilibrium dihedral angle and formation of large solid skeleton arranged in long chain of connected solid-phase domains. The settling procedure will be simulated by two submodels: free settling model in which solid-phase domains fall under gravity over already settled domains, and extended model in which settled domains continue their motion till they reach a position of their local equilibrium. Three more submodels will be also defined: rearrangement densification model, settling densification model, and Brownian motion model. It will be assumed that under gravity condition Stokes’s law settling usually dominates microstructure formation, where the settling procedure as well as settling time will be used for computation of average migration distance during defined time interval. Thus gravity induced solid-phase domain structure evolution will be simulated by simultaneous computation of displacement of the center of mass. The new methodology will be applied for simulation of microstructural evolution of a regular multi-domain model under gravity and gravity conditions.