Thermally-insulated ultra-fast high temperature sintering (UHS) of zirconia: A master sintering curve analysis
2021
Abstract
A thermally-insulated Ultra-fast High temperature Sintering (UHS) has been developed to maximize the densification of 3 mol% yttria-stabilized zirconia and improve the energy efficiency of the process. Thermally-Insulated UHS (TI-UHS) employed a fibreboard insulator, which reduced the energy consumption by approximate to 40% compared to the reference set-up.
An ultrafast heating rate, approaching approximate to 20 0 0 degrees C/min, produced dense (99% relative density) and fine-grained (178 +/- 18 nm) microstructures within 60 s. By cross-linking finite element simulations with master sintering curves a good fit between experimental and predicted density was obtained, allowing the development of predictive models for UHS densification.