Instability of sintering of porous bodies

Sintering models are discussed and used to analyze flow instabilities that may arise during preliminary compaction of powders. These instabilities can be at the origin of heterogeneities in the densification. The material is modeled as a viscoplastic thermal sensitive porous mate-rial. The modeling includes the limit case of a linear viscous material. The eects of sintering conditions (temperature and pressure in the case of pressure sintering) and the eects of material characteristics such as porosity, heat capacity, theoretical density, surface tension, particle size and creep parameters on stability of sintering are investigated. The heat release associated with the plastic flow is shown to sometimes have an important role. Stability cri-teria are derived and applied to the analysis of sintering and hot isostatic pressing, using var-ious sintering models. These stability criteria can be used to optimize the densification process; one can control, for example, temperature so as to avoid any instability. Stability maps enabling an optimization of temperature–pressure regime in hot isostatic pressing are built fo