This study investigated the densification behavior of rhenium alloys including W-25 wt.%Re and Re-2W-1Ta (pure Re) during sintering. The dilatometry experiments were carried out to obtain the in-situ shrinkage in H2 atmo-sphere. The measured data was analyzed through shrinkage, strain rate and relative density, and then symmetricallytreated to construct the linearized form of master sintering curve (MSC) and MSC as a well-known and straightforwardapproach to describe the densification behavior during sintering. The densification behaviors for each material were ana-lyzed in many respects including apparent activation energy, densification parameter, and densification ratio. MSC witha minimal set of preliminary experiments can make the densification behavior to be characterized and predicted as wellas provide guideline to sinter cycle design. Considering the results of linearized form and MSC, it was confirmed thatthe W-25 wt.%Re compared to Pure Re is more easily densified at the relatively low temperature.

The master sintering curve (MSC) is derived from densification data over a range of heating rates and temperatures. To improve the accuracy, several modifications were proposed: multi-phase MSC for solid state sintering with phase changes, MSC for liquid phase sintering, and MSC with consideration of grain growth. The developed MSC models were applied to several material systems such as molybdenum, stainless steels, and tungsten heavy alloys (WHA), in order to evaluate the effect of compaction pressure, phase change, grain growth, and composition on densification, to classify regions having different sintering mechanism, and to help engineer design, optimize, and monitor sintering cycles.