Pore-crack orientation effects on fracture behavior of brittle porous materials

Mechanical behavior of two-dimensional microstructures containing circular pores were simulated under uniaxial and biaxial loading using the finite element method. Resulting stress distributions were combined with classical fracture mechanics to investigate fracture behavior of brittle porous materials assuming that randomly oriented cracks are present along pore surfaces. Multiple crack orientations were found to introduce a variability in Weibull modulus even for the same set of microstructures containing equal number and size of cracks. Also, the variability increases with increasing crack size to pore size ratio. Under uniaxial loading, angular distribution of fracture origin widens with increasing porosity.