Grain-growth law during Stage 1 sintering of materials

This work investigates the grain-growth behaviour of powder compact during Stage 1 sintering (<90{%} theoretical density). It is widely accepted that grain size is an important state variable in the constitutive modelling in material sintering. However, it is noted that all the existing grain-growth laws proposed in the literature do not incorporate the effect of externally applied stress independently. In this work, a grain-growth law with externally applied stress as a variable was proposed. Alumina powders were forge-sintered at different applied stresses to examine the proposed grain-growth relationship. The proposed grain-growth law was then applied to model the grain-growth process on the sinter forging of tool steel. It is shown that the present proposed grain-growth law provides a good description on the experimental results.