Various Master Sintering Curve Concepts and its Applications

The master sintering curve (MSC) is derived from densification data over a range of heating rates and temperatures. To improve the accuracy, several modifications were proposed: multi-phase MSC for solid state sintering with phase changes, MSC for liquid phase sintering, and MSC with consideration of grain growth. The developed MSC models were applied to several material systems such as molybdenum, stainless steels, and tungsten heavy alloys (WHA), in order to evaluate the effect of compaction pressure, phase change, grain growth, and composition on densification, to classify regions having different sintering mechanism, and to help engineer design, optimize, and monitor sintering cycles.