Lotus-type porous materials (LTPMs) are considered as a new category of engineering materials. They are porous materials characterized by long, straight, unidirectional cylindrical pores, and are obtained via unidirectional solidification from a melt under hydrogen and argon atmospheres. The anisotropic pore morphology of lotus-type materials results in the anisotropy of their mechanical and physical properties. This study aims at investigating the effect of cross-sectional pore shapes on the effective Young's modulus (EYM) of LTPMs. The representative volume element-based finite element homogenization method was used to compute the effective bulk and shear moduli. Subsequently, the EYM was deduced from the effective bulk and shear moduli. The numerical results of the circular pores were validated by comparing them with experimental results. Because the results indicated that the EYM is extremely sensitive to the variation in the pore shapes, a formula for estimating the EYM of LTPMs by considering the pore shapes was developed and validated.

The present paper concerns a computational study of a three-dimensional (3D) unit cells with identical spherical voids in a von Mises matrix. The objective is to estimate the effective plastic flow surface of 3D microstructures. The work originality is to deal with identical spherical overlapping voids, covering a wide range of stress triaxiality ratios. The effective plastic flow surface is computed for nine distinct loadings on four distinct microstructures. The result indicates that the classical Gurson–Tvergaard–Needleman (GTN) model obtained using the Fritzen et al.parameters, matches with our numerical simulations.