Predicting the elastic properties of closed-cell aluminum foams: a mesoscopic geometric modeling approach

Abstract

The biggest challenge in predicting the elastic properties of closed-cell aluminum foams is capturing the actual geometrical and topological characteristics precisely and efficiently such that the model can be used to predict the mechanical properties of the real foam accurately. This paper presents a mesoscopic modeling approach for constructing a geometric model that captures these characteristics and can be used to predict its elastic properties. The modeling approach introduces a new method for finding the number of seeds based on the cell diameter distribution and an algorithm for computing and assigning the irregular cell wall thickness based on reverse bubble growth. Results from the foam models developed in this work were found to have better accuracy in capturing the geometrical and topological characteristics of the real foam. All foam models generated by the proposed modeling approach have the same cell size distribution and irregular cell wall distribution as the real foam. The models have cells with around 14 faces with 5 edges on each face which is similar to real metal foams and naturally occurring foams. Numerical results from the foam models showed a better accuracy in predicting the relative Young's modulus of the real foam than the generic Laguerre-Voronoi, Kelvin, and Grenestedt models.

A Review of Lightweight Design for Space Mirror Core Structure: Tradition and Future

“…[66] Voronoi tessellation is a space division technique developed by mathematician G.F.Voronoi in 1905. This method produces regions called "cells" from a set of points called "seeds", and it has the characteristic property that any point within a cell will be closer to the cell's seed than any other point in the space [67,68]. Voronoi cells offer an element of randomization in the structure which is the primary difference between the lattices and Voronoi cells.…”

Simulation of Ultrasonic Backscattering in Polycrystalline Microstructures

“…The thus achieved higher flexibility allows for better control over cell sizes, see Figure 4. Laguerre tessellations generated by random closed packings of spheres are a standard model for rigid foams [52][53][54][55] and popular models for polycrystals [5]. Methods for fitting in the statistical sense [52], reconstruction from 2D images [56] or cell centroids and volumes in 3D [21], as well as approximation based on 3D image data [20] are available.…”

On non‐stationary polarization methods in FFT‐based computational micromechanics

“…In this section, we consider a closed‐cell foam, see Figure 1B. Following Abdullahi et al, 61 the microstructure was generated by shrinking the cells of a Laguerre tessellation, where we use the Newton algorithm discussed in Kuhn et al 62 to generate 27 Laguerre cells of equal volume. The resulting foam has a volume fraction of , and was discretized by voxels.…”

“…(A) Short-fiber composite 60. (B) Closed-cell foam 61. (C) Metal-matrix composite Iteration counts for the ADMM with different settings and the fiber composite with linear elastic constituents The primal solvers are shown for comparison.…”