On the accumulation of irreversible plastic strain during compression loading of open-pore metallic foams

The accumulation of plastic strain as an essential element of the compression behavior of metal foams is investigated by analyzing effective stress-strain curves which were recorded during testing. By applying loading/unloading cycles within the low-strain region until reaching the stress plateau, it is studied how reversible elastic deformation is gradually transformed into irreversible plastic deformation and it is shown that both, elastic and plastic strains, contribute to the total strain epsilon. This behavior is found to be independent on the investigated mesostructural foam morphologies. Furthermore, a method is derived which can be used to determine a proof stress sigma(phi pl) = 0.5 at which yielding dominates the deformation of a metal foam.