Numerical simulation of open-cell aluminum foams under compression

The numerical simulation of the compression behavior of open-cell aluminum foams is discussed as a way to extract material property information for laser forming simulation. A bilinear isotropic model was implemented for the alloy base material whereas a parametric approach was used to build the finite element model of the foam structure. Compression tests were performed on commercial foams with different pore size and density, and the results of lower density foam were used for the model validation. Numerical results show a good agreement with experimental data in terms of foam deformation under compression and required loads.