Abstract: Numerical simulation of hot-press sintering of nano-sized ceramic powders was introduced by the commercial finite element code MSC.MARC. The powder plastic model and the thermo-mechanical coupled quadrilateral element were developed and adopted in the simulation. The mechanical and thermal properties of the nano-sized alumina based powders were determined. In addition, the experimental research and numerical simulation of the sintering process of different initial densities were carried out. The stress state in sintering of green compacts with different initial densities was analyzed by the densification theory. The reason for the density fluctuations of as-sintered ceramic bulks was found out.

Key words: Sintering, Finite element method, Green compacts, Stress