• Open Access

Sintering of polydisperse viscous droplets

Fabian B. Wadsworth, Jérémie Vasseur, Edward W. Llewellin, and Donald B. Dingwell
Phys. Rev. E 95, 033114 – Published 24 March 2017
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Abstract

Sintering—or coalescence—of compacts of viscous droplets is driven by the interfacial tension between the droplets and the interstitial gas phase. The process, which occurs in a range of industrial and natural settings, such as the manufacture of ceramics and the welding of volcanic ash, causes the compact to densify, to become stronger, and to become less permeable. We investigate the role of droplet polydispersivity in sintering dynamics by conducting experiments in which populations of glass spheres with different size distributions are heated to temperatures above the glass transition interval. We quantify the progress of sintering by tracking changes in porosity with time. The sintering dynamics is modeled by treating the system as a random distribution of interstitial gas bubbles shrinking under the action of interfacial tension only. We identify the scaling between the polydispersivity of the initial droplets and the dynamics of bulk densification. The framework that we develop allows the sintering dynamics of arbitrary polydisperse populations of droplets to be predicted if the initial droplet (or particle) size distribution is known.

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  • Received 8 September 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.95.033114

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

©2017 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Fluid DynamicsCondensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsNonlinear Dynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Fabian B. Wadsworth1, Jérémie Vasseur1, Edward W. Llewellin2, and Donald B. Dingwell1

  • 1Department of Earth and Environmental Science, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Theresienstr. 41, 80333 Munich, Germany
  • 2Department of Earth Sciences, Durham University, Science Labs, Durham, DH1 3LE, United Kingdom

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Issue

Vol. 95, Iss. 3 — March 2017

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