Direct 3D Simulation of Powder Sintering by Surface and Volume Diffusion

Abstract:

Within the general context of solid-state sintering process, this work presents a numericalmodelling approach, at the grain scale, of ceramic grain packing consolidation. Typically, the sinteringprocess triggers several matter diffusion routes that are thermally activated: surface, grain boundaryand volume diffusions. Including this physics into a high-performance computing framework wouldpermit to investigate and to track the changes occurring into a granular packing during sintering. Inperforming this kind of simulations, one will face several challenges: the strong topological changesappear during sintering simulation at the grains scale, the evolution of the structure is mainly drivenby the surface tension phenomena through the Laplace's law, and the mechanical properties of thegrains could, possibly, be different. The proposed numerical simulations are carried out within anEulerian Finite Element framework and the Level-Set method is used to cope with changes in themicrostructure. The results obtained with this numerical strategy are compared with success to theusual geometrical models.

• Periodical: Key Engineering Materials (Volumes 554-557)
• Pages: 714-723
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/KEM.554-557.714
• Online since: June 2013
• Authors: Daniel Pino Muñoz, Julien Bruchon, Sylvain Drapier, François Valdivieso
• Keywords: Level-Set, Solid-State Sintering, Surface Diffusion, Surface Tension, Volume Diffusion

References

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