A finite element model to study the effect of porosity location on the elastic modulus of a cantilever beam

An investigation to determine the effect of porosity concentration and location on elastic modulus is performed. Due to advancements in testing methods, the manufacturing and testing of microbeams to obtain mechanical response is possible through the use of focused ion beam technology. Meanwhile, rigorous analysis is required to enable accurate extraction of the elastic modulus from test data. First, a one-dimensional investigation with beam theory, Euler-Bernoulli and Timoshenko, was performed to estimate the modulus based on load-deflection curve. Second, a three-dimensional finite element (FE) model in Abaqus was developed to identify the effect of porosity concentration. Furthermore, the current work provided an accurate procedure to enable accurate extraction of the elastic modulus from load-deflection data. The use of macromodels such as beam theory and three-dimensional FE model enabled enhanced understanding of the effect of porosity on modulus.