Effect of porosity on compressive properties of porous sintered stainless steel fiber media

Porous sintered 316L stainless steel fibers of 100μm in diameter were fabricated by loose sintering technology, with porosity from 70%-95%. And compressive properties of the porous sintered stainless steel fiber media were investigated by using MTS 858 system at room temperature. The results indicate that the compressive stress-strain curves of porous sintered stainless steel fiber media, with porosity less than 82.8% exhibits three distinct regions (three deformation stages) under compressive loading, i.e., elastic stage, a plateau stage that occurs after yielding and final densification region where the stress increases drastically. Moreover, compressive stress-strain curves of the porous sintered stainless steel fiber media present smooth and long plateau stages. Therefore, the porous sintered stainless steel fiber media show excellent energy absorption capacity. By increasing porosity, it is obvious that the compressive yield strength slumps. Moreover, the unloaded Young's modulus gradually decreases with increase of porosity. It can be found that the average unloaded Young's modulus and average compressive yield strength of the porous sintered stainless steel fiber media with porosity of 70% is 5.2GPa and 23MPa. Instead, when porosity is more than 90.1%, the energy absorption capacity of the porous sintered stainless steel fiber media is very little.