Wetting and capillarity driven grain rearrangement and microstructure evolution during liquid phase sintering: Solubility and particle size effects

由于液相烧结涉及相变动力学(熔融/凝固)、润湿和毛细作用以及刚体运动，因此对数值模拟是一个挑战。尽管有这种复杂性，我们最近实施了一种有效的混合方法来充分解决这个问题。该方法结合了用于模拟微观结构演化的强大相场方法和多相格子Boltzmann方法，该方法以充分研究复杂几何形状中的流体流动和毛细作用而闻名。这里的关键问题之一是液体辅助的固体颗粒之间的键的解离以及由此导致的颗粒迁移率的增加如何影响微观结构的演变。此外，应研究毛细管桥的影响以及由此产生的固体颗粒之间的相互吸引。这里的重要问题涉及硬/软颗粒尺寸比和多分散性对微观结构演变和压实动力学的影响。

Liquid phase sintering represents a challenge to numerical simulations as it involves phase transformation kinetics (melting/solidification), wetting and capillarity and rigid body motion. Despite this complexity, we have recently implemented an efficient hybrid method to adequately tackle this problem. The approach combines the powerful phase field method for the simulation of microstructure evolution with the multiphase lattice Boltzmann method, well-known for adequate study of fluid flow and capillarity in complex geometries. One of the key issues here is how the liquid-assisted dissociation of the bonds between solid grains and the resulting increase in grain mobility influence the evolution of the microstructure. Furthermore, effects of capillary bridges and the resulting mutual attraction between solid particles shall be investigated. Important questions here concern the influence of hard/soft particle size ratio and polydispersity on microstructure evolution and compaction dynamics.