Degree of pore-grain boundary contact during sintering

The stereological method of Aigeltinger and Exner^5] for quantifying the degree of pore-grain boundary contact by second phases has been modified to correct a bias in the computation of the extended grain boundary area. Reanalysis of the above authors’ data for sintered copper powders using the modified equation shows a degree of contact of 1.8 compared to their earlier value of 2 times the number of pore-grain boundary contacts expected from random intersections. Application of the modified equation to new data for sintered tungsten shows a similar degree of contact of 1.7 throughout all stages of sintering. Formerly Graduate Student, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Alabama at Birmingham. An erratum to this article is available at .