Dear Colleagues,

Ceramic materials are widely used in medicine, electrical and electronics industries, body armor, etc. The volume fraction of pores and pore space structure are the main characteristics that determine the physical and mechanical properties of ceramic. Advanced technologies like additive manufacturing are capable of creating materials with a very complex multiscale structure both of the porous space and the matrix itself. As a result, the mechanical behavior of the material can be nonlinear and even unpredictable, especially in the presence of interstitial fluid.

The problem of porosity influence on the physical and mechanical properties of porous materials has a long history; many outstanding researchers have tried to solve it in various statements. For its analytical solution, the most successful approaches are the micromechanics of composites, which are based on the method of a self-consistent field (definition of the property contribution tensor), and the method of random functions. However, these approaches can predict only elastic, thermal, and electromagnetic properties of the material. However, these approaches have failed to predict the strength of materials. At the same time, novel computational techniques enable the correct simulation of material behavior from the atomic scale up to the macroscale.

This Special Issue gathers the most recent and major scientific progress on studying the effect of porosity on the mechanical properties of ceramics. Moreover, this issue also focuses on method development and investigations on pore structure–property relationships for hard biological tissues and other brittle porous materials. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:

• Deformation and fracture mechanisms of porous ceramics;
• Porous ceramics under dynamic loading;
• Effect of pore size on the ceramics strength;
• Defects in porous ceramics and its strength;
• Sound absorption in porous materials;
• Auxetic porous structures;
• Fluid-saturated porous materials;
• Deformation and strength of bones;
• Multiscale modeling of porous materials;
• Advanced numerical simulation techniques for porous materials.

We kindly invite you to submit a manuscript(s) for this Special Issue. Original research articles, short communications, and systematic reviews are all welcome.

Prof. Dr. Alexey Smolin
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Ceramics
• Porosity
• Pore structure
• Deformation
• Elastic properties
• Strength properties
• Structure–property relationships