The Effect of Particle Necks on the Mechanical Properties of Aerogels

Mechanical properties of open-porous materials are often described by constructing a cellular network with beams of constant cross sections as the struts of the cells. Such models have been applied to describe, for example, thermal and mechanical properties of aerogels. However, in many aerogels, the pore walls or the skeletal network is better described as a pearl-necklace, in which the particles making up the network appear as a string of pearls. In this paper, we investigate the effect of neck sizes on the mechanical properties of such pore walls. We present an analytical and a numerical solution by modeling these walls as corrugated beams and study the subsequent deviations from the classical scaling theory. Additionally, a full numerical model of such pearl-necklace-like walls with concave necks of varying sizes are simulated. The results of the numerical model are shown to be in good agreement with those resulting from the computational one.