Effect of Cell Morphology on the Macroscopic Mechanical Behavior of Three-Dimensional Open-Cell Foams

Solid foams are novel materials that have found numerous applications in the construction of light, stiff structures during the past few decades. At the micro-level, solid foams possess a cellular structure that comprises either closed or open cells. Open-cell foams, which are the concern of this study, are described as a network of inter-connected struts (or ligaments) with beam-like action. In order to assess their macroscopic mechanical behavior one needs to account for the micro-structural mechanisms inherent insuch materials. Homogenization methods provide a natural solution by linking the response of each material point on the macro-scale to the response of a representative portion of the microstructure, namely RVE, on the micro-scale. Current study employs a version of these methods to study the effect of cellshape (cell morphology) variation on the macroscopic uniaxial compressive response of open-cell foams

Keywords:

Constitutive modeling , Homogenization , Open-cell foams , Morphology