Modeling Functionally Graded porous structures with stochastic voronoi diagram and B-spline representations

Abstract

Functionally Graded Materials (FGMs) have been extensively studied in the past few decades. With increasingly powerful computers and highly precise measuring technologies, initial macro-scale volume fractions based FGM characterization has been extended to microstructural models, enabling more delicate and accurate description of FGMs in computer-aided design and analysis. This paper presents a new design approach to modeling porous structures with graded porosities and pore distributions. A novel digital model based on stochastic Voronoi diagram and B-Spline representation is proposed. Using such a model, generic porous structures with graded and irregularly shaped pores can be easily designed. The proposed approach is therefore useful for downstream model validations, simulations as well as microstructural optimizations. © 2010 IEEE.