Mesoscale modeling of aluminum foams for fea of scattering effects due to cell distribution

Mechanical behavior of metallic foams suffers from scattering due to morphology and distribution of cells. FEA modeling, at mesoscale level, may assist design of metallic foam components or the development of a proper model able to consider the effects of this variability. This paper discusses a foam modeling approach based on a surface tessellation provided by a Voronoi diagram, investigating its ability to obtain a final model that respects an assigned cell morphology. Results show that a wide range of void volume fraction can be achieved, with good agreement between assigned cell morphology and modeled cell distribution. Absence of non-manifold geometry and STL optimization speed-up the FEA checks on the solid mesh creation, so that, many models may be systematically simulated to investigate the role of cell morphology during deformation.