Triple modeling and geometrical study on the closed-cell metal foam with random-distributed pores

Metallic foams are a new category of metals with a porous structure which possess new mechanical¡ thermal¡ electrical and acoustic properties including low density with simultaneously high stiffness¡ and acoustic and thermal insulation. These materials are utilized as a sandwich core to decrease the structure total weight and also¡ energy absorption and damping. Wide range of metallic foam application makes it necessary to develop a modeling method which can be used in the numerical study of the mechanical behavior of these materials. In this regard¡ a novel geometrical modeling approach is proposed to produce a geometrical model of the foam. This is based on subtracting spherical pores with a random size and random position from the solid sheet which makes a more realistic way of foam sheet modeling. Most of the prior approaches use a repeating unit cell structure. Thus¡ three algorithms¡ including progressive subtraction¡ incremental and random-based subtraction of the pores are presented and developed. The proposed model validation is carried out based on geometrical aspect and with the comparison of four parameters such as relative density¡ cell size ranges¡ distribution of cell sizes in the foam structure and mean cell sizes. Results show a close agreement between modeled foams with real ones. Also¡ geometrical study results that with an increase in the mean cell size¡ relative density first increases and then decreases.