Viscoplastic behaviour of porous bronzes and irons

An experimental investigation is presented for the viscoplastic behaviour of porous metals. The interest is in the influence of porosity on the deformation behaviour of such materials under loading at various strain rates. Material samples of bronze with 10% tin and pure iron were fabricated by powder metallurgy technology with porosity ranging from 10 to 40%. The samples were then subjected to a large uniaxial compression under both quasi-static and dynamic loading with the maximum strain rate at 10 s−1. The materials show behaviour in an approximately bi-linear nature for strain up to 0.4. The data will be used to develop simple phenomenological constitutive models, which incorporate the volume fraction as a control factor.