Effect of the porosity on the fracture surface roughness of sintered materials: From anisotropic to isotropic self-affine scaling

TL;DR

This study investigates how porosity influences the fracture surface roughness in sintered materials, revealing a transition from anisotropic to isotropic self-affine scaling as porosity increases beyond 10%.

Contribution

It provides a quantitative analysis of the evolution of fracture surface roughness scaling with porosity in sintered materials.

Findings

Roughness profiles exhibit self-affine scaling.

Scaling properties change from anisotropic to isotropic with increasing porosity.

Transition occurs at porosity levels above 10%.

Abstract

To unravel how the microstructure affects the fracture surface roughness in heterogeneous brittle solids like rocks or ceramics, we characterized the roughness statistics of post-mortem fracture surfaces in home-made materials of adjustable microstructure length-scale and porosity, obtained by sintering monodisperse polystyrene beads. Beyond the characteristic size of disorder, the roughness profiles are found to exhibit self-affine scaling features evolving with porosity. Starting from a null value and increasing the porosity, we quantitatively modify the self-affine scaling properties from anisotropic (at low porosity) to isotropic (for porosity larger than 10 %).