Effective Young’s modulus of nanoporous materials with cuboid unit cells

Due to their superior mechanical characteristics, nanoporous materials and structures have attracted increasing interest in the last decade. The mechanical and physical properties of the surface layer are different from the bulk material when the structural size is at nanoscale. In this work, a nanoporous model with periodically arranged cuboid-shaped pores is presented. Based on the surface elasticity, the expression of the effective Young’s modulus is obtained theoretically. For a given relative density, the influences of the surface effect on the nanoporous structure are examined. It is shown that the effective Young’s modulus grows with increasing surface Young’s modulus or decreasing inclination angle for the ligament. Moreover, it is suggested from the results that a negative effective Young’s modulus could be achieved when the residual surface stress is less than zero. In addition, the impact of the relative density on the proposed nanoporous material is also investigated.