Determination of internal stresses during sintering of dispersion reinforced glass matrix composites

This paper presents a procedure for estimating the internal stresses that develop during sintering of glass matrix composite materials containing hard second phase inclusions. The experimental data are obtained by the heating microscopy technique, that allows the measurement of axial and radial shrinkages during sintering of powder compacts. With this experimental information sintering kinetics parameters are readily obtained, which can be used to determine the internal stresses that develop during sintering, normalized by the sintering pressure. Data on glass matrix composites containing spherical rigid ceramic inclusions are presented. More experimental data are needed, however, for testing the described procedure and for validating existing theoretical models for the sintering of glass composites containing rigid inclusions.