Porous Materials, such as sintered fiber felts (SFFs), can contribute to
the reduction of aircraft noise by acting as a low-noise trailing edge (TE). A rolling
process with a time-varying rolling gap was sucessfully used to tailor the aeroacoustic
properties of SFFs. To ensure the suitability of rolled porous materials for application,
the mechanical properties after rolling must be investigated. The objective of this
study was to clarify the effect of the rolling process on the damage evolution during
tensile loading. A SFF consisting of a functional layer and a support grid made
of alloy 1.4404 was used for rolling. Interrupted tensile tests in combination with
computed tomography (CT) were used to investigate the damage evolution of asreceived
material, uniformly rolled material and material rolled with a gradient in
thickness reduction. Metallographic examination and fracture surface analysis using
scanning electron microscopy (SEM) complemented the CT analysis. Uniformly rolled
material with a low degree of deformation (-0.74 ≤ φ < 0) failed identically to the
as-received material. The functional layer failed first, starting from the center. The
support grid subsequently failed due to the incremental failure of individual wires. The
material rolled with a gradient in thickness reduction failed accordingly. A significant
change in damage evolution occured for material rolled at high degrees of deformation
φ≤-1.53, where the support grid fails first and the functional layer second. The rolling
process using a time-varying rolling gap does not result in a detrimental mechanical
behavior under tensile load. The results improve the general understanding of the
effects of rolling processes on the properties of porous materials and allow the damage
behavior to be taken into account with regard to its application as a TE.