Sintering experiments on low porosity aggregates of silica microparticles

Abstract

Sintering of dust aggregates is one of the important changes of material properties in formation process of planetesimals. Poppe (2003) studied the temperature and time dependence of sintering process of highly porous aggregates consisting of 1.5um diameter silica spheres.
In this work, we investigate the temperature and time dependence of sintering of lower porosity aggregates consisting of 10um diameter silica spheres and study the changes of the compressive strength of the aggregates due to sintering. We report the results including the preliminary results of aggregates which have a size distribution peaked at 1um in diameter.