Numerical Study on the Plastic Forming of Doubly Curved Surfaces of Aluminum Foam Sandwich Panel Using 3D Voronoi Model

Abstract

This paper presents a numerical investigation on the plastic forming of doubly curved surfaces of aluminum foam sandwich panel (AFSP). A mesoscopic 3D Voronoi model that can describe the structure of closed-cell aluminum foam relatively realistically was established, and a series of numerical simulations using the model of the sandwich panel with a Voronoi foam core were conducted on the plastic forming of two typical doubly curved surfaces including spherical and saddle-shaped surfaces of AFSPs to analyze the deformation behaviors and the forming defects in detail. Multi-point forming experiments of spherical and saddle-shaped AFSPs with different target radii were implemented and the doubly curved panels with good forming quality were obtained. The simulated results of the surface illumination maps, the face sheet profiles, and the maximum strain differences in selected areas of the face sheet and the experimental results indicated that the Voronoi AFSP model can reflect the actual defects occurred in the plastic forming of doubly curved sandwich panels, and the high forming accuracy of the sandwich panel model was also demonstrated in terms of the shape error and the thickness variation.