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A Representative Volume Element for the Densification of Powders
Author(s) -
Krishnan Kumar,
Slaughter William S.,
McAfee Richard J.,
Nettleship Ian
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
journal of the american ceramic society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.9
H-Index - 196
eISSN - 1551-2916
pISSN - 0002-7820
DOI - 10.1111/j.1551-2916.2006.00983.x
Subject(s) - dimensionless quantity , materials science , sintering , volume fraction , flattening , spheres , discrete element method , ceramic , volume (thermodynamics) , composite material , mineralogy , metallurgy , thermodynamics , geology , physics , astronomy
Previous studies have shown that the traditional phenomenological models of sintering contain pores that are generally too small and too numerous to represent the microstructural evolution of alumina ceramics at temperatures below 1400°C. In this study a representative volume element was simulated by the random placement of 1000 non‐overlapping spheres, which was subsequently densified by contact flattening. The resulting dimensionless microstructural pathway based on the fraction of solid‐solid surface showed very good agreement with experimental results for alumina sintered at 1350°C. Increasing the width of the sphere size distribution for this simulation had little effect on the chosen dimensionless microstructural pathway.