Evaluation of sintering stress from 3-D visualization of microstructure: Case study of glass films sintered by viscous flow and imaged by X-ray microtomography

The sintering stress is a driving force for morphological evolution of pores in sintering, and can be determined from knowledge of the microstructure. The sintering stress of non-equilibrium, non-uniform and non-isotropic porous glass films cast and sintered on rigid substrates was computed from synchrotron X-ray microtomography data. This method was able to show how the inhomogeneous distribution of local density at the particle scale led to a difference in local sintering stress. The anisotropic microstructure in the film was correlated to the deviatoric components of the sintering stress, which were defined by surface energy tensor. The topological evolution of pore structure was characterized by genus and Euler characteristic. (C) 2013 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.