Abstract
An understanding of the overall porous copper behavior is developed through the combination of real data from microstructures and the fundamental material characteristics of the constitutive phases. Captured morphological images, using the Nano-CT are utilized to generate the geometric information. Object-oriented finite element (OOF) analysis is quite a novel numerical approach to incorporate morphological images, acquired from scanning electron microscopy into 2-D finite element modeling. This paper seeks to investigate the porosities using two methods (Archimedes principle and Nano-CT) and then to introduce an image-based extended OOF modeling technique based on mapping the real microstructures of porous copper and gage its ability to predict the elastic moduli and evaluate the deformation mechanism resulting from the porous copper. Dissolution sintering technique was used by mixing Cu powders with NaCl in the volume ratio of 1:1 and 1:3 adding polyvinyl alcohol solution as a binder with NaCl as the space holder. The green form was pressed at 375 MPa using a four-column hydraulic lab press. The NaCl was leached out in hot water at 70 A degrees C and then sintered to a temperature of 850 A degrees C. Porosity values were determined from density measurements to give the porosity values of 42.2 and 45.71 % for volume ratio of 1:1 and 1:3, respectively. The material properties were obtained from the tests and compared to previous literature. Very good agreement has been shown, establishing the viability of this kind of morphology-based numerical approach.