The influence of agglomerates on the densification and microstructural evolution in sintering of a multi-particle system

Effects of agglomerates on the densification behavior and microstructural evolution during solid-state sintering of a cube of copper particles have been studied with discrete element method (DEM). It is found that the densification of the sintering system decreases as the volume fraction of agglomerates increases. At a given volume fraction of agglomerates, the smaller the size of agglomerates, the poorer the densification and more inhomogeneous the compact is. The morphology and distribution of agglomerates have negligible effects on the densification, especially for the case with a low volume fraction of agglomerates. Agglomerates with a smaller average coordination number would have more restriction on the densification of sintering bodies. To our best knowledge, it is the first time to study the effect of agglomerates on sintering behavior using DEM. This study should be useful for further investigations of the effect of various inhomogeneities of microstructure on the complex sintering process by DEM.