COMPUTER-SIMULATIONS OF SINTERING VIA GRANULAR DYNAMICS

The sintering of non-cohesive particles is examined via granular dynam ics techniques. In particular, the relevance of percolation theory to the sintering process is examined and it is shown that directed percol ation may provide an adequate description at the sintering threshold f or nearly spherical particles. Furthermore, the external force needed to overcome a material dependent sintering threshold, theta, is shown to increase linearly with theta. The stresses inside a compressed gran ular medium is shown to be fractally distributed with the total stress S in a volume l2, growing like S approximately l(alpha), where alpha almost-equal-to 1.89 +/- 0.02. Finally, the influence of non-spherical particles is shown to be largest when the external stresses are small est.