Aluminum Foam Compression Finite Element Simulation Of The Performance

The study on mechanical properties is the basis for application of aluminum foam, it was not only predicted the compressive properties, but also extended the mechanical properties of metallic materials database through the simulation by finite element software. This paper has summarized the mechanical properties of aluminum foam from two respects, microscopic and macroscopic view. Because micro-model or macro-model can not completely described the open-cell and closed-cell of aluminum foam, there are a great difference in the simulation results and experimental results. A huge mass of data will be accumulated to find an accurate pattern.On the principle of theory, the two different materials, Al and Al-Si alloy was choosed for the open-cell Aluminum foam. Three kinds of elements mold, include a regular tetrahedron, octahedron, and Kelvin mold, were analyzed. Simulation results show that the compression load-time curves of the three element models have the same general trend. There are roughly three stages, elastic region, plastic platform region and intensification region. Moreover, the comparison between experiment results and simulation results show that the Kelvin mold has the highest porosity and its simulation results of platform stress closer to the experimental value in the three elements mold. On the two materials, Al-Si alloy has greater platform stress and long platform region, the overall compression performance of Al-Si alloy is better than pure Al. Therefore, Kelvin mold should be selected to more realistic; a variety of aluminum alloys can be used to improve the mechanical properties.In order to analysis the preparation of metal foam by Percolation Process, geometric parameters cell structure simulation study and experimental comparison was adopted. the software Deform-3D was used on aluminum foam compression performance of numerical simulation. During the simulation, we selected three groups of foam model:①aluminum foam with different pore model;②foam materials of different aluminum matrix model;③different sizes of foam aluminum model. The results are showed as follows: materials, pore size, the sample size on the compressive properties of aluminum foam have some effect. The greatest impact of materials, pore size followed by, the sample size is the smallest.Based on the foaming process assumptions and the characteristics of the foam microstructure, the closed-cell foam model of a simple cubic unit cell was established. Using ANSYS / LS-DYNA, the appropriate boundary conditions was set in calculating the density of the foam within the yield strength and Young's modulus. There are theoretical predictions with the results of comparison, the yield stress of the error value 8%; Young's modulus error of 16.7%, which shows that the closed-cell foam model is valid.Using ANSYS / LS-DYNA software, based upon the test results, the axial crash behaviors of the aluminum foam-filled circular tubes are analyzed. Simulation results show that aluminum foam filled tube and the air tube have the same deformation mode .Subjected to Axial Compression Buckling occurs when the deformation compared with the empty tube. Foam filled aluminum tube's mean crushing force was significantly increased from 430MPa up to 700MPa, which show that the foam filled aluminum foam can increase the energy absorption capacity.