Cellular materials offer a wide spectrum of applications such as catalyst support structures, lightweight materials, energy adsorption or energy storage materials. Due to several ways of processing and different materials, a wide range of material properties e.g. thermal conductivity, mechanical strength or damping can be adjusted, measured and verified, with regard to the expected properties. Especially in heterogeneous and homogeneous porous structures and their composites, only global effective material properties can be determined and measured. For example, the knowledge on the predominating influence of the microstructure on the global properties is the key for designing materials with desired properties. To fill this gap and enable a "look-in" a microstructure model derived from µ-CT measurements carried out at certain processing steps can be used as model for FEM-calculations. In this context, the representative volume of interest (REVOI) in particular plays a decisive role in order to be able to determine the global and not only local characteristics. By combining Minkowski and structural parameters, the REVOI can be determined as a function of the cellular structure.
Combining estimated material properties by experiment with microstructure models offers the possibility to carry out different simulations over different hierarchical levels in order to design the structures for future applications of porous ceramics.