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ABSTRACT
Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) is an innovative sintering technique, whereby many of the beneficial effects of this process on sintering are still elusive. To allow for the detailed investigations of the SPS process, a custom experimental set-up and a corresponding finite element (FE) model was developed. The miniaturised setup allows for very high current intensities, custom pulse patterns, a wide pressure range and dilatometric measurements. The FE model was employed to calculate the temperature field in the set-up and the sintering specimen itself. A very good correlation of the temperature, current and voltage over the entire process was observed. Our investigations show that the contact conductivities have a significant impact on the process temperature. Also, the imperfect contacts at the interfaces between the graphite foil and the real specimen may lead to a significant variance of the currents necessary to obtain the desired sintering temperature.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the DFG for funding of our research and the company Ecka Granules for providing copper powder.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Notes on contributors
M. Nöthe
M. Nöthe received his Ph.D. in natural sciences from RWTH Aachen University in 2000. Since 2001 he has been working at the Technische Universität Dresden on fundamental investigations of the cooperative material transport during the sintering of metal powders using high-resolution computed tomography combined with computed image analysis. Since 2014 he has conducted experimental investigations of the fundamentals of spark plasma sintering.
J. Trapp
J. Trapp received his Ph.D. in Engineering from Technische Universität Dresden in 2017 where he studied the fundamentals of spark plasma sintering. He now works in the field of light metals and metal matrix composites at the Dresden Lab of the Fraunhofer Institute of Manufacturing and Advanced Materials (IFAM). His focus in processes lies on melt spinning, high energy ball milling, densification by spark plasma sintering and the process evaluation using Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) for process gas analysis.
A. S. Semenov
A. S. Semenov received his Ph.D. in 1996 and Dr. Sci. (habilitation) in 2022 from the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, specialising in nonlinear continuum mechanics. He now works as the Chair of Mechanics of Multifunctional Structures (Technische Universität Dresden) and as the deputy director of the High School of Mechanics and Control Processes at the Institute of Physics and Mechanics (Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University). His research interests include the theory of plasticity, fracture and damage mechanics, ferroelectricity/ferroelasticity and computational mechanics.
B. Kieback
B. Kieback works at Technische Universität Dresden, Institute of Materials Science. From 1993 until 2019 he held the chair ‘Powder Metallurgy, Sintered and Composite Materials’. From 1992 until 2019 he also worked at Fraunhofer Institute of Manufacturing and Advanced Materials (IFAM) as the director of the Dresden Lab. The activities in both organisations are oriented on processes of powder metallurgy, sintered materials and metal matrix composites.
T. Wallmersperger
T. Wallmersperger is a full professor of the Mechanics of Multifunctional Structures at the Institute of Solid Mechanics and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Science and Engineering at TU Dresden. His research topics comprise coupled multi-field problems, modelling of soft and hard materials, micromechanics, smart materials and adaptive structures, discretisation methods and numerical modelling. He completed his Ph.D. in 2003 and his habilitation in 2010 in Stuttgart, Germany. Currently, he is an associate editor of the Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures and a member of the Editorial Boards of Acta Mechanica and of Micromachines.