Damage behavior of cold-rolled sintered fiber felts

Abstract

Porous Materials, such as sintered fiber felts (SFFs), can contribute to the reduction of aircraft noise by acting as a low-noise trailing edge (TE). A rolling process with a time-varying rolling gap was sucessfully used to tailor the aeroacoustic properties of SFFs. To ensure the suitability of rolled porous materials for application, the mechanical properties after rolling must be investigated. The objective of this study was to clarify the effect of the rolling process on the damage evolution during tensile loading. A SFF consisting of a functional layer and a support grid made of alloy 1.4404 was used for rolling. Interrupted tensile tests in combination with computed tomography (CT) were used to investigate the damage evolution of as-received material, uniformly rolled material and material rolled with a gradient in thickness reduction. Metallographic examination and fracture surface analysis using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) complemented the CT analysis. Uniformly rolled material with a low degree of deformation (−0.74 ≤ φ < 0) failed identically to the as-received material. The functional layer failed first, starting from the center. The support grid subsequently failed due to the incremental failure of individual wires. The material rolled with a gradient in thickness reduction failed accordingly. A significant change in damage evolution occured for material rolled at high degrees of deformation φ ≤ −1.53, where the support grid fails first and the functional layer second. The rolling process using a time-varying rolling gap does not result in a detrimental mechanical behavior under tensile load. The results improve the general understanding of the effects of rolling processes on the properties of porous materials and allow the damage behavior to be taken into account with regard to its application as a TE.