Kinetics of the Initial Stage of Sintering from Shrinkage Data: Simultaneous Determination of Activation Energy and Kinetic Model from a Single Nonisothermal Experiment

A new method for the kinetic analysis of the initial stage of sintering for constant-heating-rate data has been proposed. Unlike all of the methods previously reported in the literature, this new method proposed here allows the simultaneous determination of the activation energy and the kinetic model from a single dilatometric curve recorded under a linear-heating-rate program. The proposed method has been tested with simulated sintering curves and experimental results have been obtained for the sintering of a rutile sample.