Abstract The effect of the morphology of open-cell foam structures on their functional properties is investigated. A stochastic microstructure model is used to generate representative 3D open-cell foam structures, where morphological properties are systematically varied. Subsequently, permeability of these virtual, but realistic microstructures is determined using the finite volume method. This procedure, which is called virtual materials testing, has recently been employed to investigate the effect of the variation of cell sizes on permeability. In the present paper, we introduce a stochastic microstructure model that can be used to generate structures with varying distribution of (open) face sizes between cells. It turns out that this characteristic strongly influences the so-called constrictivity, a measure for bottleneck effects, which, in turn, has a strong impact on the resulting permeability. Moreover, we show how the virtual materials testing approach can be applied to derive empirical formulas between descriptors of 3D morphology and functionality. Additionally, an experimental validation of the simulation results is performed by printing three of the virtual structures using selective laser melting and subsequent experimental measurement of pressure drop, which allows calculation of the permeability using Darcy's law.

中文翻译：

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使用虚拟材料测试研究开孔泡沫的形态和渗透性之间的关系

摘要 研究了开孔泡沫结构的形态对其功能特性的影响。随机微观结构模型用于生成具有代表性的 3D 开孔泡沫结构，其中形态特性系统地变化。随后，使用有限体积方法确定这些虚拟但真实的微观结构的渗透率。该程序称为虚拟材料测试，最近已被用于研究单元尺寸变化对渗透率的影响。在本文中，我们介绍了一种随机微观结构模型，该模型可用于生成具有不同单元之间（开放）面尺寸分布的结构。事实证明，这一特性强烈影响了所谓的收缩性，这是衡量瓶颈效应的一种方法，它，反过来，对由此产生的渗透性有很大影响。此外，我们展示了如何应用虚拟材料测试方法来推导出 3D 形态和功能描述符之间的经验公式。此外，模拟结果的实验​​验证是通过使用选择性激光熔化和随后的压降实验测量打印三个虚拟结构来执行的，这允许使用达西定律计算渗透率。