Predicting the Fatigue Life of an AlSi9Cu3 Porous Alloy Using a Vector-Segmentation Technique for a Geometric Parameterisation of the Macro Pores

Abstract

Most of the published research work related to the fatigue life of porous, high-pressure, die-cast structures is limited to a consideration of individual isolated pores. The focus of this article is on calculating the fatigue life of high-pressure, die-cast, AlSi9Cu3 parts with many clustered macro pores. The core of the presented methodology is a geometric parameterisation of the pores using a vector-segmentation technique. The input for the vector segmentation is a μ-CT scan of the porous material. After the pores are localised, they are parameterised as 3D ellipsoids with the corresponding orientations in the Euclidian space. The extracted ellipsoids together with the outer contour are then used to build a finite-element mesh of the porous structure. The stress–strain distribution is calculated using Abaqus and the fatigue life is predicted using SIMULIA fe-safe. The numerical results are compared to the experimentally determined fatigue lives to prove the applicability of the proposed approach. The outcome of this research is a usable tool for estimating the limiting quantity of a structure’s porosity that still allows for the functional performance and required durability of a product.