Description
Microwave sinter-forging of zirconia ceramics is a novel combination of microwave sintering and sinter-forging. This thesis investigates the effect of microwave sinter-forging on zirconia ceramics. Thesis also explains microwave sinter-forging of zirconia ceramics under the effect of different applied load conditions and compares these results with the conventional sinter-forging of zirconia under identical conditions. For this purpose the thesis describes two different original experimental setups in two different (conventional and microwave) furnaces under identical processing conditions (in terms of temperature, time and applied loads). The data obtained from both the microwave and conventional sinter-forging is analyzed by scanning electron microscopy. The microwave sinter-forging is more sensitive to the contribution of applied load compared to the conventional sinter-forging. The microwave sinter-forging technique is shown to render more dense material with uniform morphology compared to the conventional sinter-forging.
