Effective Elastic Moduli of Porous Ceramic Materials

Abstract

This paper compares the applicability of a few theoretical models for determining effective elastic moduli, using published experimental data on ceramic materials in a porosity range of 0–40% and on a cellular material with a porosity of about 90%. As the experimental data for the effective Poisson's ratio involve a large scatter, a set of numerical experiments using the finite element method was carried out to obtain the variation of the effective Poisson's ratio with porosity. These variations show that the effective Poisson's ratio approaches 0.25 with increasing porosity, irrespective of the material Poisson's ratio. The effect of pore shapes on the effective elastic moduli and the Poisson's ratio has also been analyzed using FEM.