A new approach for the Young's modulus-porosity correlation of ceramic materials

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 that uses the contiguity and continuous volume as topological parameters. The derived equation shows very good agreement with experimental data drawn from the literature on porous glasses and ceramics for a wide range of porosity volume fractions. As a result of the limited geometrical and topological information on the porosity structure supplied in the original studies, however, the full potential of the model for Young's modulus prediction could not be demonstrated. For a rigorous verification of the equation, therefore, experimental data on materials with well-described porosity structures is required. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Limited and Techna S.r.l.