Sintering of glass powders

Abstract

Sintering of glass powders is a new route to prepare monolithic glass pieces via viscous flow Commercial glass such as borosilicate glass, and soda-lime-silicate glass is a basic type used in this thesis because of its constant composition and availability. Glasses were ground into two fractions, 180-125 µm and 125-63 µm, mixed with 1% PVA binder (by weight), and then pressed with a pellet press to get cylindrical-shape specimen. The specimens were fired at varied viscosity level, after that density and porosity were measured a long-range dilatometer was constructed for on-line detection of the shrinkage. When heated up at log ɳ = 10.0, ɳ in dPas, and sintering completes at 6.7. The behavior of the shrinkage of the specimen at constant viscosity level follows an Avrami-Erofe’ev type kinetics. From this, the time demand of sintering is calculated.