Mechanical and structural characterization of nonsintered and sintered steel wools by x-ray tomography: Description of the techniques and validation on virtual materials

Properties of entangled materials, made of fibers, depend on the number and the nature of contacts between fibers and fibers orientation. Nonsintered and sintered steel wools have been characterized by x-ray tomography to extract structural information such as fibers orientation and number of contacts before and during compression. Image analysis techniques were developed on tomography images and validated on virtual materials, generated and deformed by numerical simulation based on molecular dynamic equations. The structural parameters measured during the structural characterization were finally used to link the structure of the studied material with the measured mechanical properties. To do this link, an analytical model usually used for this kind of material was modified to describe the evolution of mechanical properties in compression.