3D modeling of porous ceramics by high-resolution X-ray CT for stress analyses

Porous ceramic materials are in widespread use and continue to be developed as the key materials for many industrial fields. The mechanical properties of these porous materials are very sensitive to their 3-dimensional structures. It is very important to analyze such materials taking into account their 3-dimensional morphology of the pore structure. An image-based modeling method using high resolution 3-dimensional computed tomography (CT) was developed, which makes it possible to reconstruct the complicated porous structures of porous ceramics nondestructively. From the 3-dimensional CT data, binary-processed images can be obtained and a voxel mesh computational analysis was carried out with a homogenization method, from which macroscopic and microscopic stress distribution for porous ceramics were possible to be calculated and visualized. From the 3-D CT image, a local microscopic model of the porous alumina was analyzed using voxel mesh method of mathematical homogenization method. Using the data the microscopic local stress distribution of the model was obtained.