Finite Element Modeling of Porous Material Structure Represented by a Uniform Cubic Mesh

Abstract

The work explores feasibility of 3D finite element modeling (FEM) to study the effective linear properties of porous brittle material microstructures represented by a uniform cubic mesh. Both artificial virtually generated and real 3D tomography specimens are considered in this work. A method for assessment of the critical value of tomography resolution is proposed. A method to build approximations of the linear effective structure properties of interest at virtually zero FE size is developed. The methods do not have to be associated with mechanical modeling only but can be applied in some other cases, e.g. effective thermal conductivity or effective permeability calculations.