A study of the evolution of microstructure and consolidation kinetics during sintering using a phase field modeling based approach

Abstract

Sintering is a processing technique which compacts powder materials into solids leading to microstructural evolution with reduced surface area and improved material density. Understanding the densification mechanism and grain growth kinetics during the powder compaction process during sintering is of immense importance in order to evaluate usability of the final materials in a wide range of applications. Current work focuses on capturing the microstructural changes as powder particles compact into a polycrystalline structure during sintering. A phase field modeling based approach is adopted in this study in order to predict consolidation kinetics during sintering. It is observed that at the initial stage of sintering interactions between powder particles are initiated due to surface diffusion. At later stage, densification is primarily governed by volume and grain boundary diffusion. Also individual grains increase in size under pressure until adjacent grains touch each other. Once grains start interacting with adjacent grains, grain boundary diffuses and average grain size stabilizes.

Synergistic Effect of Graphene Oxide for Impeding the Dendritic Plating of Li

“…Phase‒field based numerical simulations were performed using the software package MOOSE . The procedure to solve differential equations used in the present modeling and simulation work is thoroughly described elsewhere and the details of the model and calculation/parameterization procedure is given in the Supporting Information. Although, the model included the description of all the relevant process, there was no possibility for simulating the detailed Li electrode position at the scale of the whole cell; for that reason, a geometrical unit that can be quantitatively described by the characteristics of the actual cell structure was chosen.…”

Particle-grain boundary interactions: A phase field study

“…However, this process is important for the study of sintering where densification proceeds via pore shrinkage. Densification can be treated in the phase field approach by considering the rigid-body translational and rotational motion of the grains and stresses as was demonstrated in [37,38].…”

Development of a UO2 Densification Model in the MARMOT Tool

“…Currently, the standard phase-field sintering model is the Wang Rigid Body Motion (RBM) model [4][5][6]. This model allows the individual particles to move as rigid bodies within the simulation, and is believed to improve the accuracy of simulations [7]. It does this by adding a rigid body velocity term to the standard phase-field equations.…”