Model of Porous Material Sintering

The mathematical model of inert porous materials sintering was proposed. As an initial data, the model uses the initial distribution of pore surface elements and time-temperature conditions of sintering. Sintering is modelled by the system of kinetic equations describing shrinkage of a material depending on its initial properties and a time-temperature condition of the process. Experiments on aluminum oxide powder sintering have been carried out in several time-temperature conditions in which linear shrinkage was traced in time. The initial powder particles size distribution was previously measured. A value of main parameters used in the model was determined according to the sample linear shrinkage data measured at the 10 ◦C/min heating rate. Time dependences of linear shrinkage were calculated for the heating rates of 5 and 15 ◦C/min. Comparison of the calculated dependences with experimental data for heating rates 5 and 15 ◦Ñ/min has shown the good qualitative and quantitative concordance.