Numerical analysis of a 2-D viscous sintering problem with non-smooth boundaries (Q1206800)

By viscous sintering it is meant the process of bringing a granular compact to a temperature at which the viscosity of the material becomes low enough for surface tension to cause the particles to deform and coalesce, whereby the material transport can be modelled as a viscous incompressible Newtonian volume flow. Here a two-dimensional model is considered. A boundary element method is applied to solve the governing Stokes creeping flow equations for an arbitrarily initial shaped fluid region. We show that the viscous sintering problem is well-conditioned from an evolutionary point of view. Several numerical examples sustain the analysis.