Aluminum Foam Mechanical Properties Of The Finite Element Simulation

The reasearch of mechanical property is the basic for the application of thestructure materials. As a new type of structural materials with a variety of goodperformance, foam aluminum’s application in industry must rely on research ofits mechanical properties. Because of the nonuniform pore structure, poor preparation process reproducibility, the results of practical measurement have poor repeatability and much more random. The compression and tensile performance under quasi-static condation of foamed aluminum were studied using the finite element simulation method in this paper. The results were summarized and analyzed as follows.Based on the idealized assumption of foaming process, open-cell and closed-cell models with single-centered cubic(SCC),face-centered cubic(FCC) and body-centered cubic(BCC) array was built. The quantitative relationships between porosity and structural parameters of cells are obtained from these models using geometry method. The compression process under quasi-static condition is simulated with DEFORM-3D V6.1software. The deformation mechanism was analyzed by contrasting the difference of the compression curves of open-cell andclosed-cell models with the same material. Simulation results showed that the compression load-time curves of the three element models have the same generaltrend, including regions of elastic region, plastic platform region and intensification region. Modulus predicted by FCC was superior to the one predicted by SCC and BCC. This showed that FCC has better description for foam aluminum’spore structure.Open-cell foam aluminums with single-centered cubic array were built. The stress-strain curves of aluminum foam and Al-Si foam with different porositywere compared. The results showed that porosity had significant effect on foamaluminum material’s compression mechanical behavior, with the increase of porosity, also the decreases of relative density, elastic modulus and compression strength of foam aluminum gradually decreased. The mechanical properties of metal matrix directly determined the foam’s compression deformation behavior and mode. Elastic modulus, yield strength and absorption of the metal material were related to metal matrix material’s performance. Aluminum foams had low yield strength and its compression stress-strain curve showed typical plastic foam’sdegeneration characteristics. Al-Si alloy foams rosed quickly in linear elastic period, and had large fluctuations in yield section.The stress of the plastic sectionof Al-Si alloy foams was higher than that of Aluminum foams, this proved thatAl-Si alloy foams had higher strength and better mechanics performance.Tensile simulation results on SCC open-cell foam aluminum under quasi-static condition showed that with the increase of the pore porosity of aluminum foams tensile strength decreased. the tensile strength of Al-Si foams was significantly higher than pure aluminum foams’, which proved that matrix material wasthe crucial factor influencing foam aluminum tensile behavior.The finite element simulation are built on the basic of some assumption, soit will inevitably lead to the deviation of the results using finite element model to represent real foam aluminum, how to select and establish a more reasonablemodel should be a concern.