The Simulation of Heat Loss and Heat Distribution in the Microwave Oven for Sintering of Hydroxyapatite

摘要

The development of microwave sintering processes for hydroxyapatite materials is done using a commercial microwave oven. Sintering is the best manufacturing process for improving the mechanical properties and micro structures of hydroxyapatite materials in biomedical applications. The development of a susceptor as a heat conductor and the development of an insulation system as a heat retardant can make an 800 W microwave oven generate heat reaching 1200 °C. The purpose of this research is to minimize the heat received by the microwave oven cavity from the microwave sintering system by changing the thickness parameter of a susceptor and insulator materials. Furthermore, this study used a finite element method (FEM) approach. The results showed that the higher the thickness of the ceramic fiberboard and the lower the thickness of the silicon carbide and alumina, the smaller the temperature cavity oven microwave occurred. The lower the thickness of the ceramic fiberboard, the lower the heat loss occurred. The thickness configuration of silicon carbide and alumina did not provide any significant changes.