To address the ambiguous definition of porosity gradient in metallic wire mesh elastomer (MWME), this work proposes a hierarchical gradient approach for identifying the quasi‐disorder characteristics of the pore structure in MWME based on fractal dimension. At first, the effects of the image parameters, including the image size, resolution, and threshold, on the fractal dimension can be analyzed, respectively. Then, the woven–metallic wire mesh (WMWM) and entangled–metallic wire mesh (EMWM) are divided into several layers to reveal the evolutionary characteristics of porosity gradient in axial and radial directions. The results indicate that the fractal dimension of pore structure in MWME is sensitive to the image parameters, especially to the threshold, and positively correlated with the cross‐sectional porosity of layers and negatively correlated with the relative density. What's more, the maximum deviation between relative density and designed density in EMWM is 0.08 g/cm 3 , which confirms the feasibility of the segmented two‐step stamping process. Finally, increasing the number of layers contributes to a smoother transition in porosity gradient.
Liu et al. (Sun,) studied this question.