Degree of pore-grain boundary contact during sintering

The stereological method of Aigeltinger and Exner[5] for quantifying the degree of pore-grain boundary contact by second phases has been modified to correct a bias in the computation of the extended grain boundary area. Reanalysis of the above authors’ data for sintered copper powders using the modified equation shows a degree of contact of 1.8 compared to their earlier value of 2 times the number of pore-grain boundary contacts expected from random intersections. Application of the modified equation to new data for sintered tungsten shows a similar degree of contact of 1.7 throughout all stages of sintering.