Experimental Assessment of Pore Breakaway During Sintering

Experimental measurements of intragranular pore-size distributions and of the shapes of distorted pores attached to grain boundaries were used to examine the podgrain-boundary separation problem. In situ evaluation of the ratio of the boundary mobility-to-surface diffusivity from pore distortion measurements, coupled with prior analytic expressions for the critical pore breakaway condition, permitted specific intragranular pore sizes generated by separation to be predicted. The predictions lie within the distribution of measured intragranular pore sizes.