Effect of sintering parameters on the densification and mechanical properties of microwave sintered stainless steel powder

Abstract

This study is to examine the effect of sintering parameters on the densification and mechanical properties of microwave sintered 316L stainless steel powder. The sintering parameters investigated were: sintering temperature, heating rate and sintering time. Sintering atmosphere was fixed to nitrogen gas. 316L stainless steel compacts were heated in a 2.45 GHz single mode microwave sintering furnace. In order to achieve the optimal densification, hardness, and compressive stress, the effects of various sintering factors pertaining to the temperature, time profile and heating rate have been characterized. In this paper reports 2-level factorial of three sintering factors have been used to set up the experiment. It was found that all the sintering factors have the sintering effects on the final result. Various factors were assigned to DOE layout and were found that all the chosen sintering factors have significant effects on the densification and mechanical properties. The optimization of the design which selected is 1300°C , 30°C and 54.19 min. The estimate density, hardness, and compressive strength value are 7.06g/cm3, 54.87 HRA and 332.78 MPa respectively.