Discrete modelling techniques in application to generation of 3D synthetic microstructures of porous metallic materials

Abstract Development of two approaches for creation of digital microstructure representations of sintered porous metals for further numerical simulations is the goal of the paper. Initially, an approach based on series of exact replicas of real 2D microstructures processed by image analysis and reconstruction algorithms was proposed. Thus, developed in-house code for 3D reconstruction of 2D images obtained from optical microscopy is briefly described within the paper. Advantages and limitations of the approach are discussed in that part. Then, to facilitate the process of generation of digital models, another solution, based on synthetic microstructures, was developed with discrete numerical method and is presented within the work. Two algorithms based on the Cellular Automata (CA) technique were developed and implemented. Description of major models assumption including generation of computational domains, cells states, boundary conditions and finally transition rules is presented for the proposed CA model. Obtained digital microstructure models are eventually subjected to numerical simulation by means of finite element tool to highlight capabilities offered by synthetic microstructures in evaluation of local material behavior.