Characterizing aluminum sintering using in-situ NDE

Considerable attention has been given to the use of nondestructive evaluation techniques to reduce the costs associated with the manufacture of powder-metallurgy components. One such technology that is being developed at the US Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory is an in situ noncontact technique to characterize sintering. The method consists of a high-temperature electromagnetic acoustic transducer to measure the amplitude and velocity of an ultrasonic tone burst travelling through a sample during sintering. Results from the in situ noncontact nondestructive evaluation measurements indicate that real-time in situ monitoring of sintering is attainable.