Integral formulation to simulate the viscous sintering of a two-dimensional lattice of periodic unit cells (Q1364011)

An integral formulation for the two-dimensional periodic Stokes flows is derived and applied to a model of the viscous sintering phenomenon (the process that occurs during the densification of a porous glass heated to such a high temperature that it becomes a viscous fluid). Numerical solutions are obtained through a boundary element method. Several example problems are considered in order to examine the effect of microstructure on the evolution of the pore size distribution.