Modeling of a sintering process at various scales

This paper presents modeling of a sintering process at various scales. Sintering is a powder metallurgy process consisting in consolidation of powder materials at elevated temperature but below the melting point. Sintering models at the atomistic, microscopic and macroscopic scales have been presented. Sintering is a process governed by diffusion therefore the atomistic modeling using the molecular dynamics has been focused on investigation of the diffusion process. The micromechanical model has been developed within the framework of the discrete element method. It allows us to consider microstructure and its changes during sintering. The macroscopic model is based on the continuum phenomenological approach. It combines elastic, thermal and viscous creep deformation. The methodology to determine macroscopic quantities: stress, strains and constitutive viscous properties from the discrete element simulations has been presented. Possibilities of the developed models have been demonstrated by applying them to simulation of sintering of the intermetallic NiAl powder. Own experimental results have been used to calibrate and validate numerical models. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.