FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF CLOSED CELL METAL FOAM

Abstract

The numerical simulation of crushing under compressive load is employed to predict deformation pattern of closed cell aluminium foam. To represent closed cell aluminium foam, tetrakaidecahedral structure is used due the fact that is it has minimum surface are per unit volume, which is also characteristic of real aluminium foam. It was observed that simple phenomenological model consider average behaviour of foam material under quasi static condition and generate yield surface based upon this data for representing dynamic response of metal foam. Though it give reasonable result, still it lack to relate with real foam topography. So unit cell based approach employed in this study can help in tailor design of foam, so that it is acceptable in aerospace, automobile industries as a main structural material. Simulation of crushing analysis of a standard specimen made up of tetrakaidecahedral aluminium foam carried out using ANSYS16.2 finite element code. In this study, solid material distribution is more along face edges, which results in low peak to valley region. It was seen that cell wall starts collapsing on face rather than near edges due to more material along edges. Stress- Strain curve of foam crushing has been plotted by using Displacement-Reaction force data from ANSYS post solution results.