Les mousses métalliques synthétisées par plasma électrolytique et leur mise en forme développées au CEA présentent certains problèmes de tenue mécanique, d’homogénéité en structure et en densité, et leur porosité n’est pas encore maîtrisée. L’objectif de cette thèse est de comprendre et d’apporter des solutions à ces difficultés rencontrées lors des différentes étapes de la synthèse. Ainsi, la thèse porte sur l’étude du système dans son ensemble pour maîtriser à la fois le procédé et la structure des mousses formées.La compréhension du plasma et de son implication dans la formation de mousses métalliques passe par celle de trois phénomènes principaux : la formation de la bulle de gaz, la formation et la propagation des décharges électriques et le transfert de charges, qui conditionnent chacun la structure finale des mousses. En premier lieu, la formation et l’évolution de la bulle gazeuse ont été observées et des modifications du procédé ont permis de maîtriser cette bulle. Ensuite, l’étude des propriétés et caractéristiques physiques des mousses d’or a été réalisée en synthétisant des mousses à partir de paramètres expérimentaux variables, puis leurs propriétés physiques et structurelles ont été mesurées. L’ensemble des expériences réalisées a permis d’établir un modèle phénoménologique qui rend compte des différents mécanismes impliqués dans la formation et la croissance des brins de mousse. Différentes expérimentations menées directement sur les décharges puis sur le système dans sa globalité ont vérifié partiellement ces hypothèses. / Some troubles are noticed on the metallic foams synthesized by an electrolytic plasma process and on the way they are manufactured. Those foams present a poor mechanical resistance, their structure is lacking of homogeneity and their porosity is far from being controlled. This PhD work aims at understanding and bringing solutions to those problems for each step of the process. Thus the whole process is studied in order to control both the experimental process and the foams structure.The plasma comprehension and especially its contribution in the metallic foams formation is driven through three main phenomena: the gaseous bubble formation, the sparks formation and propagation, and the charge transfer. Each one is playing a role on the final foam structure. First, the formation of the gaseous bubble and its evolution were observed, and then the process was modified to control the bubble. Second, foams were synthesized with different process parameters and their characteristics were studied in order to highlight their influences. All those experiments led to the creation of a phenomenological model which goal is to explain the different mechanisms involved in the foam strands growth. Several experiments were carried out, some on the sparks, others on the whole system, and the hypotheses were partially proved.

Metal foams are lightweight structures and have large use in many components acting as impact energy absorbers. They have exceptional mechanical, thermal and acoustic properties. The design or selection of foam for packaging is done on the basis of impact loads to be sustained or energy to be absorbed. For transportation of nuclear material, metal foams can be used as a packaging material. It may be noted that apart from other qualification requirements, a package containing nuclear material, has to be certified for drop test. Foam can serve the purpose by providing proper cushioning. Metal foams are still under development and need to be accurately characterized in terms of their mechanical properties as well as cell morphology. The aim of this work is to develop, characterize and model foam using experiments and analysis. Aluminum foam has been developed by powder metallurgy technique and the effect of addition of varying amounts of Mg and Alumina on the strength and energy absorption has been studied. Foams of varying densities have also been developed. The reason for going for higher density is to obtain higher plateau stress. If a package is designed with lower density foam, it may become very bulky and even impractical. The characterization part of the work includes study of porosity distribution, cell wall structure, microscopy, SEM images, etc. Mechanical testing (uniaxial compression) was performed on foam samples to get load deflection curve of foams. Area under a given curve i.e. energy absorbed per unit volume has been compared for various compositions and densities. The analysis part of the work presents effect of specimen size on bulk properties of foam. 2D honeycomb and 3D cases have been discussed. To model the porosities, spherical cavities have been assumed. Uniaxial compression cases with different combinations of porosities have been analyzed. The properties like Young’s modulus, plateau stress, Poisson’s ratio, tangent modulus, etc. have been evaluated. The effect of variation in yield strength and tangent modulus of base material on foam has been studied. It appears that if the model is based on uniform porosity distribution, it may lead to lower bound values of physical properties and give conservative result. Although some of these trends have been observed in published literature, the current numerical study has generated additional information and insight.

The mechanical behavior of closed cell metallic foams strongly depends on their geometry at the scale of cells and cell walls. Two approaches are proposed in this work to address this computationally:(i) a controlled geometrical description of foam morphology features by exploiting an advanced tessellation-based procedure, allowing to generate realistic microstructural geometry,(ii) a procedure allowing to extract geometrical features of a foam morphology based on image-based modelling using CT scans. The first approach proposes a methodology that allows the automated generation of RVEs with a detailed control of the microstructure, including of cell geometries. It is primarily based on an inclusions packing algorithm assisted by distance fields control. Such distance fields can subsequently be used to morph inclusions, producing generalized tessellations with the possibility of incorporating curved and irregular boundaries. 3D morphologies of closed cell foams are produced by extracting the geometry from a proper combination of distance field functions. The procedure allows controlling the cell size distribution, spatial cell wall thickness distribution (correlated or not with the cell size distribution), wall curvatures and/or defects. An automated 3D meshing tool for implicit geometries was exploited to produce high quality tetrahedral meshes from the generated implicit foam geometries. Representative volume element based simulations were performed using this approach to assess the different morphological features relative importance on the mechanical behaviour of ALPORAS. An original extension of this tool was incorporating the transformation of 3D geometry into a shell-based finite element model. This resulted in a significant gain in computation time and allowed for simulating compression test up to densification (being out of reach with 3D solid finite element models) showing a good qualitative match with experimental results from the literature.The second approach proposes a robust methodology for the automated generation of shell-based finite element models directly from X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) scans.An in situ X-ray CT compression test of the sample was performed to serve as basis of comparison to the computations. As first steps, raw CT images are segmented using various image processing techniques and an implicit 3D geometry is reconstructed for each cell by using a Euclidean distance field computation technique. An automated geometrical procedure is used next to extract a (surface) shell geometry from this implicit 3D geometry, followed by subsequent meshing step. A direct comparison of the performed simulations with raw experimental data is performed. The detailed deformation and failure mechanisms of closed-cell foams under quasi static uniaxial compressive loading are investigated numerically and compared directly with the result of the in situ experimental measurement. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The objective of this doctoral thesis is to study three different innovative noise control techniques in ducts namely: acoustic metamaterials, porous absorbers and microperforates. There has been a lot of research done on all these three topics in the context of duct acoustics. This research will assess the potential of the acoustic metamaterial technique and compare to the use of conventional methods using microperforated plates and/or porous materials.  The objective of the metamaterials part is to develop a physical approach to model and synthesize bulk moduli and densities to feasibly control the wave propagation pattern, creating quiet zones in the targeted fluid domain. This is achieved using an array of locally resonant metallic patches. In addition to this, a novel thin slow sound material is also proposed in the acoustic metamaterial part of this thesis. This slow sound material is a quasi-labyrinthine structure flush mounted to a duct, comprising of coplanar quarter wavelength resonators that aims to slow the speed of sound at selective resonance frequencies. A good agreement between theoretical analysis and experimental measurements is demonstrated. The second technique is based on acoustic porous foam and it is about modeling and characterization of a novel porous metallic foam absorber inside ducts. This material proved to be a similar or better sound absorber compared to the conventional porous absorbers, but with robust and less degradable properties. Material characterization of this porous absorber from a simple transfer matrix measurement is proposed.The last part of this research is focused on impedance of perforates with grazing flow on both sides. Modeling of the double sided grazing flow impedance is done using a modified version of an inverse semi-analytical technique. A minimization scheme is used to find the liner impedance value in the complex plane to match the calculated sound field to the measured one at the microphone positions. / <p>QC 20160923</p>

[pt] As cascas cilíndricas possuem aplicações em diversas áreas da engenharia. Nas últimas décadas tem se observado o surgimento de novos materiais e suas técnicas de produção, levando a novas aplicações em estruturas de cascas. Dentre estas, as cascas sanduíche e cascas com gradação funcional têm levado, em muitas aplicações, a um melhor desempenho estrutural associado a uma redução de peso. Este trabalho tem como objetivo estudar as frequências naturais e as cargas críticas de cascas sanduíche com faces de metal e núcleo de espuma metálica e cascas com gradação funcional, onde as características da espuma metálica variam ao longo da espessura levando a uma estrutura similar à da casca sanduíche. Esses resultados são comparados com aqueles de cascas isotrópicas homogêneas. Para tanto, é utilizada a teoria linear de Donnell, que é uma das mais empregadas para análise de cascas. Primeiramente, derivam-se as equações de movimento assim como as equações de equilíbrio crítico. Utilizando as soluções analíticas para uma casca simplesmente apoiada, obtêm-se as matrizes de massa, de rigidez e de rigidez geométrica, possibilitando o cálculo das frequências naturais e cargas críticas da casca sob compressão axial e pressão lateral. Através de uma análise paramétrica, os resultados mostram a influência da geometria da casca, da variação do material ao longo da espessura, do cisalhamento no núcleo e dos termos de inércia nas cargas críticas e frequências naturais. Os resultados também ressaltam a influência do núcleo de espuma metálica no aumento da capacidade de carga e redução de peso das cascas sanduíche e com gradação funcional. / [en] Cylindrical shells are used in several areas of engineering fields. In the last decades has been observed the emergence of new materials and their production techniques, leading to new applications in shell structures. Among these, the sandwich shells and shell with functionally graded materials have led, in many applications, to a better structural performance associated to a reduction of weight. This work aims to study the natural frequencies and the critical loads of sandwich shells with metal faces and metal foam core and functionally graded shells, where the characteristics of the metallic foam vary throughout the thickness leading to a structure similar to that of the sandwich shell. These results are compared with those of homogeneous isotropic shells. For this, the linear theory of Donnell, which is one of the most used for shell analysis, is here used. First, the equations of motion as well as the critical equilibrium equations are derived. Using the analytical solutions for a simply supported shell, the mass, stiffness and geometric stiffness matrices are obtained, allowing the calculation of the natural frequencies and critical loads of the shell under axial compression and lateral pressure. Through a parametric analysis, the results show the influence of the shell geometry, material variation along the shell thickness, shear deformation of the core and the inertia terms on the critical loads and natural frequencies. The results also highlight the influence of the metallic foam core in increasing the load bearing capacity and reducing the weight of the sandwich and functionally graded shells.

Les matériaux cellulaires sont des échantillons à très forte porosité qui peuvent être décrits à deux échelles : la mésostructure et la microstructure. Le lien entre l'architecture des matériaux et les propriétés mécaniques a été largement étudié dans la littérature. Les caractéristiques microstructurales peuvent avoir une influence importante sur les propriétés macroscopiques. Le but de ce travail est de relier les caractéristiques architecturales et microstructurales des matériaux cellulaires à leurs propriétés mécaniques grâce notamment à la tomographie aux rayons X. Une nouvelle approche combinant l'imagerie 3D à plusieurs résolutions, le traitement d'images et la modélisation éléments finis a permis de prendre en compte la microstructure de la phase solide. Quatre matériaux cellulaires modèles ont ainsi été étudiés : des mousses d'aluminium, des structures cellulaires périodiques en alliage de cobalt-chrome, des échantillons de β-TCP et des composites hydroxyapatite/β-TCP. Les matériaux métalliques ont été fournis par des collègues d'autres laboratoires, tandis que les matériaux céramiques ont été fabriqués dans le cadre de cette étude. Pour chaque type de matériaux (métaux et céramiques), une structure régulière et une stochastique ont été comparées. Pour utiliser la méthode multi-échelle développée dans ce travail, les échantillons ont d'abord été scannés grâce à la tomographie locale dans laquelle l'échantillon est placé près de la source de rayons X. La tomographie locale permet de scanner la petite partie irradiée de l'échantillon et d'obtenir une image agrandie par rapport aux images à plus basse résolution. Ces images permettent d'observer certains détails de la phase solide non visibles à plus basse résolution. Différentes étapes de traitement d'images ont ensuite été mises en œuvre pour obtenir une image à basse résolution incluant les informations provenant des images à haute résolution. Ceci a été réalisé grâce à une série d'opération de seuillage et sous-résolution des images à haute résolution. Le résultat de ces différentes étapes de traitement d'images donne une image de l'échantillon initial à basse résolution mais qui inclut l'information supplémentaire décelée à haute résolution. Ensuite, des essais mécaniques in situ ont été réalisés dans le tomographe pour suivre à basse résolution l'évolution des échantillons pendant la déformation. Les images initiales citées plus haut ont été utilisées pour produire des maillages éléments finis. Des programmes Java ont été adaptés pour créer des fichiers d'entrée pour les modèles éléments finis à partir des images initiales et des maillages. Les images initiales contenant les informations à propos de la phase solide, les images des essais mécaniques et les modèles éléments finis ont permis d'expliquer le comportement mécanique des échantillons en reliant les sites d'endommagement expérimentaux et les lieux de concentrations de contraintes calculés. / Cellular materials are highly porous systems for which two scales are mainly important: the mesostructure and the microstructure. The mesostructure corresponds to the architecture of the materials: distribution of solid phase “walls” and macroporosity and can be characterized by X-ray tomographic low resolution images. The link between the architecture of the materials and the mechanical properties has been frequently studied. The microstructure refers to the characteristics of the solid phase. Its microstructural features (presence of a secondary phase or of defects due to the sintering) can have a strong influence on the macroscopic properties. The aim of this work is to link the morphological and microstructural features of metallic and ceramic based cellular materials and their mechanical properties thanks to X-ray tomography and finite element modelling. A new method combining X-ray tomography at different resolutions, image processing and creation of finite element modelling enabled to take into account some microstuctural features of the cellular samples. Four different cellular materials were studied as model materials: aluminium foam fabricated by a liquid state process, cobalt periodic structures made by additive manufacturing, β-TCP porous samples fabricated by conventional sacrificial template processing route and hydroxyapatite/β-TCP composites made by additive manufacturing (robocasting). The metal based materials were provided by colleagues while the ceramic based porous materials were fabricated in the frame of the current study. For each type (metals or ceramics), a stochastic and a regular structure have been compared. For implementing the multiscale method developed in this work, the samples were firstly scanned in a so called “local” tomography mode, in which the specimen is placed close to the X-ray source. This allowed to reconstruct only the small irradiated part of the sample and to obtain a magnified image of a subregion. These images enable to observe some details which are not visible in lower resolution. Different image processing steps were performed to generate low resolution images including microstructural features imaged at high resolution. This was done by a series of thresholding and scaling of the high resolution images. The result of these processing steps was an image of the initial sample. Then, in situ mechanical tests were performed in the tomograph to follow the deformation of the sample at low resolution. The above mentioned initial images were used to produce finite element meshes. Special Java programs were adapted to create finite element input files from initial images and meshes. The initial images containing information about the solid phase, the images from the mechanical tests and the finite element models were combined to explain the mechanical behaviour of the sample by linking the experimental damage locations in the sample and the simulated stress concentration sites.