Constitutive modeling of aluminum foam including fracture and statistical variation of density

Abstract

An existing constitutive model applicable for aluminum foam was evaluated. The model was implemented in LS-DYNA, and several test cases were analyzed and compared to experimental data. The numerical analyses consisted of foam subjected to both simple and more complex loading conditions where fracture was of varying importance. Therefore, simple fracture criteria were added to the model. Additionally, the inhomogeneities in the foam were modeled by incorporating the possibility of statistical variation of the foam density. The implemented model is efficient and robust, and gives satisfactory results compared with the experimental results.