Lightweight metallic cellular materials: A systematic review on mechanical characteristics and engineering applications

Lightweight metallic cellular materials (MCMs) have been seen in numerous engineering applications to date, primarily due to their excellent mechanical characteristics such as low weight, high specific stiffness/strength, good energy absorption capacity as well as other multifunctional properties. Moving forwards, MCMs configurations and structures are typically built up by sophisticated interconnected topology comprising of various solid struts or plates. Practical applications of cellular materials mainly exploit their homogenized effective properties, which are strongly relied on the mesoscopic and/or microscopic characteristics of unit-cell materials and structures, stimulating significant research interest in this area. In this present review, typical manufacturing technologies and design optimization strategies are briefly outlined for MCMs at first. Then, the advances in the micro-meso-macro (MMM) multiscale mechanical properties are reviewed. A range of inverse identification approaches are compared for characterizing mechanical properties of MCMs at microscale. Some mesoscale models that are utilized to define the structural configurations of MCMs are discussed. Characterization of macroscale multiaxial mechanical behaviors of MCMs are reviewed in detail, which involves experimental tests, numerical modeling, inverse calculation, and material constitutive models available in commercial codes. Finally, the mechanical responses of representative MCMs-based structures as well as the advanced engineering applications are outlined. This systematic review is expected to highlight the state-of-the-art and shed some light on the prospects for researchers and engineers to realize desirable multiscale mechanical properties and expand more practical applications of MCMs.