Mechanical Properties and Constitutive Model Applied to the High-Speed Impact of Aluminum Foam That Considers Its Meso-Structural Parameters

Abstract

In this work, quasistatic mechanical compression experiments were used to study the stress–strain relationship of aluminum foam, and the mechanism of the compressive deformation of aluminum foam under quasistatic compression conditions is discussed based on the experimental observations. Since the interactions among cells of the aluminum foam and differences in compressive strength among cells substantially impacted the mechanical properties of the material, the cellular structural parameters, namely the cell size and cell wall thickness, were defined. Along with the mechanism of deformation of a single cell, the influence of structural parameters on the micro failure mechanism and the stress–strain relationship of the aluminum foam material was analyzed. In combination with the factors influencing the mechanical properties of the aluminum foam, a mechanical constitutive model of aluminum foam suitable for multi-density and multi-impact environments that considers cellular structure density was established to predict the complete stress–strain relationship of aluminum foam under a high strain rate. The coupling function of strain rate and temperature in the original model was verified and the parameters were determined by the compression experiments under different strain rates and different temperatures.