Identification of elastoplastic material parameters for the solid phase of metal foams

For the prediction of the mechanical behavior of foams, the effective foam properties can be calculated from the mechanical properties of the solid phase and the geometric microstructure via computer simulation. However, the mechanical properties of the solid phase often differ from those of the bulk material due to the manufacturing process. In this paper, we propose a new method for solving this problem. Loading–unloading tests on a foam sample are used to identify the material parameters of the solid phase of Al via a microscale simulation. A closed-cell Al foam is considered as an example. Finally, we show that for a different microstructure, the identified material parameters predict the unknown effective foam parameters with high accuracy. For this purpose, a second Al foam sample is considered.