numerical study of dynamic compression process of aluminum foam with material point method

• DOI: 10.3970/cmes.2011.082.195
• Publication Date: 2011-01-01
• Authors: Xiong Zhang; Xinming Qiu; Weiwei Gong
• Keywords: 0203 mechanical engineering; Constitutive relations, aluminum foam, material point method, dynamic compression; 02 engineering and technology

Due to its high strength, low weight and strong anti impact capability, aluminum foam has great potential in the fields of transportation, aerospace and building structures as energy absorbing materials. Due to its complicated microstructures, it is desirable to develop an efficient numerical method to study the dynamic response of the aluminum foam under impact loading. In this paper, the material point method (MPM) is extended to the numerical simulation of the dynamic response of the aluminum foam under impact loading by incorporating the Deshpande Fleck's model and a volumetric strain failure model into our three-dimensional explicit material point method code, MPM3D. The developed method is first validated by comparing the numerical results obtained by MPM3D for a Taylor bar test with those obtained by LS-DYNA, and then is used to simulate the dynamic compression process of aluminum foam material. The numerical results show that the MPM has significant advantages in analyzing the high-speed dynamic characteristics of aluminum foam materials, and can be used in the practical applications of aluminum foam materials.