A NEW APPROACH FOR THE YOUNGS MODULUS-POROSITY CORRELATION OF CERAMICMATERIALS

A new approach for determining the Young's modulus of porous ceramics is presented. The approach is based on a previous equation derived for two-phase composites on the basis of a microstructural description th at uses the contiguity and continuous volume as topological parameters . The derived equation shows very good agreement with experimental dat a drawn from the literature on porous glasses and ceramics for a wide range of porosity volume fractions. As a result of the limited geometr ical and topological information on the porosity structure supplied in the original studies, however, the full potential of the model for Yo ung's modulus prediction could not be demonstrated. For a rigorous ver ification of the equation, therefore, experimental data on materials w ith well-described porosity structures is required. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Limited and Techna S.r.l.