Research On Simulation Modeling And Compression Performance Of Aluminum Foam Sandwich Panels

Aluminum foams have received a considerable attention due to their excellent properties, such as extremely low density, high specific strength and stiffness, unusual acoustic properties, high energy-absorbing capability, and flame resistance, and have been proposed for many industrial sectors including automotive, ship building, railway and aircraft industry. But aluminum foams face problems with low modulus and rough surface in a practical application. This makes it can’t solely be used for structural materials. In order to solve the problem above, aluminum foams are usually used by combining with conventional dense metal structures. Among them, aluminum foam sandwich is one of the main forms of combination. However, there are problems with the connection between aluminum foam sandwich and other metal plate in engineering application. Such as aluminum foam sandwich is rather thick and has a low densification which causes that connectors can’t pass stronger interaction, leads to pore structure failure and a low tightness, and so on. So far, aluminum foam sandwich panel with a metallurgy bonding interface has been obtained in abroad. However, aluminum foam sandwich panels can be only derived using adhesive bonding method at home which has poorer hot-resistant and corrosion-resistant capability. For these reasons, the works of the paper are as follows:Firstly, in this work, the development of the preparation method of aluminum foam sandwich panels was reviewed, the corresponding flowcharts were presented, and the merits and faults of different processes were concluded.Secondly, on the basis of the predecessors, the paper puts forward the modeling method of aluminum foam sandwich, namely the aluminum foam sandwich simulation model generation system, and the model size, porosity, pore diameter range and the minimum wall thickness are adjustable. Compared with those of previous 3D model, the model is much close to real structure of aluminum foam sandwich material. However, the inner structures of this model is quite complex, and the finite mesh generation is fairly difficult by importing this model into simulation software.Lastly, the paper simplified simulation models of aluminum foam sandwich panels and builds the 3D simulation models of aluminum foam sandwich with round hole and uniform method. In the process of simulation, using the finite element software ANSYS/LS-DYNA, theoretical analysis and finite element simulation, this paper studied the performance of compression for the aluminum foam sandwich, as well as the deformation mechanism of aluminum foam sandwich panels under compressive load. Results show that, the stress-strain curve corresponding to compression tests of aluminum foam sandwich can be divided into three stages: elastic, stress platform and densification stage. Compression speed and porosity has a significant impact on compressive behavior of aluminum foam sandwich. In addition, with the increasing of compression speed, the ability of resisting destruction increases and with the increase of porosity, elastic modulus and yield strength decreases. The results further confirmed that there is a direct relation between the mechanical property of metal matrix and the compressive deformation behavior of aluminum foam sandwich, and the elastic modulus as well as yield strength of aluminum foam sandwich is related to corresponding performance of metal matrix.