Effective viscous sintering parameters for heterogeneous plate-like structures using numerical homogenisation

A model to describe the sintering of plate-like structures and the numerical technique to obtain its ingredients from the analysis of a given heterogeneous structure are described. Finite membrane strains are accounted for and numerical creep tests are used to extract suitably defined macroscopic viscosities and generalised sintering stresses for plate-like structures. An example is analysed and compared to a full 3D simulation.