Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : October 07, 2017 - October 09, 2017
Elastic flexural behavior of aluminum foam beam under shear effect was investigated by finite element method (FEM). Two dimensional beam models, i.e. square-shape cell and honeycomb models, of aluminum foam were introduced, 3-point bending and flexural vibration tests simulations were performed. Shear effect was incorporated by shortening the length or span of the beam models in the simulation. As a result, we figured out that the flexural deflection was much larger than the predicted value of Timoshenko's beam theory when shear effect was dominant. Moreover, the deflection gap became much larger when the density value decreased. This was then compared with our experimental investigation reported in the previous work by plotting the normalized flexural modulus obtained from simulations against the length-to-thickness ratio. The plot exhibited that both FEM models showed a good agreement with experimental results. In order to clarify the reason of the large bending deflection under shear effect, analysis on the local deformation of unit-cells of the beam models was carried out. It was indicated that as the density becomes smaller (thinner cell-wall thickness) and the shear effect becomes dominant, the cells tend to demonstrate a complex deformation shape which is believed to be the origin of the large deflection of aluminum foam beam under shear effect.
