Compressive Response Determination of Closed-Cell Aluminium Foam and Linear-Elastic Finite Element Simulation of μCT-Based Directly Reconstructed Geometrical Models

The development of an efficient procedure for three-dimensional modelling and finite element simulation of metal foams remains one of the greatest challenges for engineers. The numerical determination of compressive properties of foam structure is a demanding engineering task and is indispensable for design purposes. In the design of load-bearing metal foam structures, the elastic behaviour under working circumstances must be considered and for the engineering calculations on the actual foam structure its precise geometrical modelling is necessary. Closed-cell aluminium foam produced from Duralcan F3.S.20S metal matrix composite (MMC) and fabricated by direct foaming technique is analysed. To ensure full comparability, specimens are characterized according to the ruling standard for compression test for porous materials. In this paper, a manual geometrical reconstruction process based on evaluation of images given by X-ray computed tomography and the related finite element calculations is introduced. The proposed procedure is capable of investigating the actual structure as a three-dimensional problem from any kind of material that can be analysed on the basis of computed tomography (CT) images. The geometrical reconstruction and the finite element calculation results show good correlation with the measured values in the elastic, which proves the utility of the presented method.