In this study, a computational approach is employed to understand the densification behavior of a multi-component alloy system during the sintering process by generating a phase field modeling image. First, a single-phase body-centered cubic (BCC) AlCrFeNiTi high entropy alloy (HEA) is prepared via a mechanical alloying (MA) route, and the powder-processed HEA is shown to exhibit dual BCC phases after spark plasma sintering (SPS). Then, phase field modeling (PFM) is used to generate a generalized image and to understand densification behavior during the sintering process. The results indicate that bulk and grain-boundary diffusion take place during the early stage and grain growth of the powder particles starts when the particles interact with their adjacent grains. Subsequently, in the final sintering stage point contacts and necking were observed. This understanding has been presented based on the phase field simulation to explore the different stages of the sintering during the processing.
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (2021R1A2C1005478). The authors would like to thank Subhash Nehval, Ph.D. scholar, and Dr. Sumanta Samal, assistant professor at IIT Indore for the useful discussion.
