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A contribution to the modeling of metal foams on the mesoscale
Author(s) -
Schwarzer Daniel,
Gatouillat Sebastien,
Proppe Carsten
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
pamm
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1617-7061
DOI - 10.1002/pamm.200700473
Subject(s) - mesoscale meteorology , materials science , metal , absorption (acoustics) , volume (thermodynamics) , representative elementary volume , material properties , composite material , linear elasticity , finite element method , mechanics , structural engineering , metallurgy , thermodynamics , physics , engineering , microstructure , meteorology
Due to their useful properties in lightweight construction and due to their excellent behavior in energy absorption for example in crash mechanics, metal foams became an interesting, often utilized and investigated material. For the determination of the mechanical properties of foams without the help of expensive experiments, a way for computing these properties is searched. The problem in doing so is that foams can be composed out of randomly distributed edges and faces with varying thickness and of other inhomogeneities on the mesoscale like imperfections. The goal in this paper is, to investigate the influence of these irregularities on the mechanical, linear elastic properties of a metal foam on the macroscale and to determine the size of a representative volume element, for which the irregularities on the mesoscale do not have a great influence on the linear elastic properties. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)