Following the progress of sintering in steel powder compacts through original experiments
Résumé
In order to evaluate the progress of sintering in powder steel compacts, two experiments were performed. First, the electrical resistivity of a die pressed compact was continuously measured during a sintering cycle up to 1130 °C inside an adapted dilatometer. The main changes occur at intermediate temperatures, since the resistivity falls by a factor of about 100 between room temperature and 800 °C and is almost constant afterwards. In the second set of experiments, partially sintered specimens are submitted to a tensile test until failure and their fracture surfaces are analysed in terms of welded area fraction of interparticle contacts...