MICROMECHANICAL BASED ANALYSIS OF POROUS MATERIALS USING SIMPLIFIED UNIT CELL MODEL

The idea of the simplified unit cell (SUC) model [1] is used to study mechanical and thermal characterizations of porous materials. The representative volume element (RVE) of the model consists of r×c×h unit cells in three dimensions in which voids are surrounded by metal cells. The two dimensional version of the model includes r×c unit cells in the x-y plane with unit thickness which is used to obtain results for lotus-type porous media. It is shown that the presented model is general and can be used to predict the behavior of a porous media subjected to thermal and mechanical, normal and shear, loading. Results for the overall thermal and elastic properties of various porous materials show good reement with both experimental data and other analytical models available in the literature.

Keywords:

Micromechanics , porous materials , simplified unit cell model