Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Porosity plays a crucial role in materials’ behavior as regards swelling, bubble/pore lattice formation, micro-structural changes-e.g. due to bubble/pore migration (especially at high temperatures) plus coalescence or ‘collisions’ - and, response to complex loading conditions, structural stability (including in geo-mechanics), mechanical-electrical-thermal properties’ variations, etc.; through a complex dependence upon the numbers, sizes, positions, internal pressures of the pores, in addition to their strain fields’ (elastic) interactions and total volumetric occupation. Hence the pivotal question about the nature, repulsive or attractive, of the elastic interaction among the pores; tackled since the 1950s by pioneers in the micromechanics of materials science (e.g. Eshelby). Herein it is proven, in a physically and mathematically rigorous way, that matrix-atoms are diffusing around each pore, practically leaving from one side of the pore and depositing on the opposite (from low-stress regions to high-stress ones), thus forcing the interacting pores to ‘repel’: In line with experimental evidence which strongly suggest repulsion; e.g. the existence of gas bubble lattices in solids (difficult to justify in a regime of mutual bubble attraction), or, of moving bubbles in solids (due to thermal gradients), which when converging towards ‘collision’, rotate around each other rather than coalesce. Contrary to opposite results of previous calculations - i.e. ‘repulsion-notattraction’ -which, in order to circumvent physico-mathematical complexity, rely upon algebraic manipulations and idealized models (and/or boundary conditions) that are physically unattainable.
DOI: 10.54026/jmms/1130
Author: Kostas Davanas
Language: English
Topic: Composite Material Mechanics
Subfield: Mechanics of Materials
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W7126402014