Fracture of Metal Foams: In-situ Testing and Numerical Modeling

This paper is on a combined experimental/modeling study on the tensile fracture of open-cell foams. In-situ tensile tests show that individual struts can fail in a brittle or ductile mode, presumably depending on the presence of casting defects. In-situ single strut tests were performed, enabling observation of deformation and fracture behavior and, in addition, serving as calibration for the proposed single-strut model. The single strut model consists of beam elements to account for elasticity and plasticity, and of special-purpose fracture elements to account for failure. The model is demonstrated for a characteristic loading configuration, combining stretching and bending.