Effect of cell structure on the uniaxial compression properties of closed-cell foam materials

Abstract

Abstract In this study, the effect of cell structure on the uniaxial elastic and plastic properties of closed-cell foam materials are investigated numerically. 76 closed-cell foam models with different cell size distributions and cell shapes are established in this study. And two structural parameters defined in our previous studies are used to characterize the morphological features of foam models. Then, the uniaxial compression simulations are proposed in this study to simulate the elastic and plastic behavior of closed-cell foam materials at the beginning loading stage. The results indicate that the relative Young’s modulus and relative yield strength decrease with the increasing characteristic diameter Dch and characteristic shape anisotropy αch. Finally, the stress and strain distributions obtained from numerical simulations are analyzed to explain why the foams with regular cell structures are inclined to have a better performance in load-bearing.