Stress Concentration in Low-Porosity Periodic Tessellations With Generic Patterns of Elliptical Holes Under Biaxial Strain

Stress concentration in porous materials is one of the most crucial culprits of mechanical failure. This paper focuses on planar porous materials with porosity less than 5%. We present a stress-prediction model of an arbitrarily rotated elliptical hole in a rhombus shaped representative volume element (RVE) that can represent a class of generic planar tessellations, including rectangular, triangular, hexagonal, Kagome, and other patterns. The theoretical model allows the determination of peak stress and distribution of stress generated near the edge of elliptical holes for any arbitrary tiling under displacement loading and periodic boundary conditions. The results show that the alignment of the void with the principal directions minimizes stress concentration. Numerical simulations support the theoretical findings and suggest the observations remain valid for porosity as large as 5%. This work provides a fundamental understanding of stress concentration in low-porosity planar materials with insight that not only complements classical theories on the subject but also provides a practical reference for material design in mechanical, aerospace, and other industry.