Computational estimation of elastic properties of spark plasma sintered TaC by meshfree and finite element methods

In this study, the overall elastic modulus of spark plasma sintered TaC composite has been estimated using a novel engineering analysis technique, called Scan-and-Solve, that makes it possible to perform completely automated stress analysis directly from the segmented micrographs. The computed results have been compared with object oriented finite element technique (OOF), which also makes use of the microstructure. In contrast with the traditional mesh based engineering analysis methods, Scan-and-Solve uses spatial meshes that may or may not conform to the shape of the geometric model. This makes Scan-and-Solve computational technology essentially meshfree, and it makes it possible to eliminate error-prone and time consuming data conversion and spatial meshing. The presented method guarantees exact treatment of the prescribed boundary conditions. In the paper, we compare the stress simulation results in porous TaC ceramic obtained by the Scan-and-Solve and object oriented finite element methods. It is shown that the effective elastic modulus predicted from the microstructure by the two methods is very similar (266 vs. 270 GPa) provided the porosity coefficients are measured close to each other.