Swelling negation during sintering of sterling silver: An experimental and theoretical approach

Charles Manière (1) , Elia Saccardo (2) , Geuntak Lee (1) , Joanna Mckittrick (3) , Alberto Molinari (2) , Eugene A. Olevsky (1)

1 SDSU - San Diego State University
2 University of Trento [Trento]
3 MAE - UC San Diego - Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering [Univ California San Diego]

One of the main challenges of the sintering of sterling silver is the phenomenon of swelling causing de-densification and a considerable reduction of the sintering kinetics. This swelling phenomenon opposes sintering and it needs to be addressed by a well-controlled processing atmosphere. In the present study, the pressure-less sintering behavior of sterling silver is investigated in air, argon, and vacuum. A specially modified spark plasma sintering mold is designed to study the pressure-less sintering of sterling silver in a high vacuum environment. The conducted analysis is extended to the new constitutive equations of sintering enabling the prediction of the swelling phenomena and the identification of the internal equivalent pressure that opposes the sintering.

Keywords: Swelling; Modeling; Dilatometry; Atmosphere control; Silver; Sintering

Domains: Chemical Sciences; Material chemistry; Engineering Sciences [physics]; Mechanics [physics.med-ph]; Mechanics of materials [physics.class-ph]; Engineering Sciences [physics]; Chemical and Process Engineering

Charles Manière, Elia Saccardo, Geuntak Lee, Joanna Mckittrick, Alberto Molinari, et al.. Swelling negation during sintering of sterling silver: An experimental and theoretical approach. Results in Physics, 2018, 11, pp.79-84. ⟨10.1016/j.rinp.2018.08.035⟩. ⟨hal-02616809⟩