FEM Optimisation of Spark Plasma Sintering Furnace

Coupled electro-thermal FEM analysis has been carried out on a sintering furnace used to produce new materials for LHC collimators. The analysis showed there exist margins for improvement of the current process and equipment through minor changes. To optimise the design of the furnace several design changes have been proposed including: optimization of material selection using copper cooling plates, control of convection in cooling plates by lowering the water flow rate, modifying the electrode shape using unsymmetrical electrodes and upgrading the thermal shielding to make use of multilayer graphite shields. The results show that we have a significant improvement in temperature gradient on the plate, from 453 to 258 °C and a reduction in power requirement from 62 to 44 kW.