Thermal-electrical-mechanical simulation of the nickel densification by Spark Plasma Sintering. Comparison with experiments

•A thermal-electrical-mechanical model has been performed to simulate the SPS process.•With use of SPS tests, the behavior of the porous medium is identified.•Comparisons between SPS tests and simulations validate the approach.•The model is able to capture the stress, temperature and porosity fields in the sample.•Post mortem analyses confirm qualitatively the temperature field in the sample.

Spark Plasma Sintering is a non-conventional process of the powder metallurgy field which uses a high electrical current to rapidly produce fully dense materials. In the present paper, a thermal-electrical-mechanical model developed on ABAQUS Software is proposed to simulate the densification of a nickel disk. A compaction model, studied in [Wolff, C., Mercier, S., Couque, H., Molinari, A., 2012. Modeling of conventional hot compaction and spark plasma sintering based on modified micromechanical models of porous materials. Mechanics of Materials 49 (0), 72–91. URL http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167663611002195], has been used to reproduce the densification of the sample. Two SPS experiments have been necessary to identify the parameters of the densification law. In order to evaluate the robustness of the present model, two other SPS experiments have been performed. The whole results of the simulation show a good agreement with the experimental data confirming the validity of the compaction model developed in [Wolff, C., Mercier, S., Couque, H., Molinari, A., 2012. Modeling of conventional hot compaction and spark plasma sintering based on modified micromechanical models of porous materials. Mechanics of Materials 49 (0), 72–91. URL http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167663611002195].