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The kinetic field – a versatile tool for prediction and analysis of heating processes
Friedrich Raether
The kinetic field method has been developed for the control of sintering processes. It is shown that the technique can be applied to solid state, liquid phase and viscous sintering. The precondition for the use of the kinetic field method is a high reproducibility of in situ measurements of the shrinkage rate. Sinter forging can be described by a modified kinetic field method, too. The technique has been successfully transferred to other thermal processes like debinding and dehydroxilation. For that, the shrinkage measurement is substituted by a measurement of the weight loss. It is shown that the method enables an accurate prediction of conversion rates in arbitrary time-temperature cycles, once the kinetic field diagram has been set up. The pattern of iso-lines which contain the essential information of the conversion kinetics can be used for a diagnosis of the mechanisms underlying the respective heating process. A well-aimed optimization of process parameters is enabled by the proper use of the kinetic field technique.
Keywords: Kinetic field, kinetics, sintering, debinding, dehydroxilation, Master Sintering Curve