Partitioned solution strategies for electro-thermo-mechanical problems applied to the field-assisted sintering technology

Zusammenfassung

Dedicated to engineers and scientists in the field of coupled problems and computational ­mechanics, this thesis addresses partitioned solution strategies for electro-thermo-mechanically coupled problems applied to the field-assisted sintering technology (FAST). By simultaneously applying uniaxial pressure and an electric current to generate high heating rates, the FAST process offers short production cycles for sintering materials. To approach the process conditions at high temperatures in a realistic and holistic way radiative heat transfer is numerically treated as an additional field. Finally, a fully coupled four-field problem is composed where for the electric, thermal and mechanical fields the finite element method is applied while solving the radiation field using computational fluid dynamic (CFD) solvers. The numerical results are ­compared to experiments. Moreover, an in-depth study of coupling algorithms is carried out to improve the convergence of the partitioned solution...