A representative volume element for the densification of powders

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 degrees 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 degrees C. Increasing the width of the sphere size distribution for this simulation had little effect on the chosen dimensionless microstructural pathway.