Blast loading on aluminum foam microstructure

One of the possible options as a material for protective layers is aluminum foams which become also very popular due to their lightweight and excellent plastic energy absorbing properties. Such characteristics have been appreciated by the automotive industry with continued research to further understand foam properties. Compressed foaming materials exhibit extensive plastic response, while the initial elastic region is limited in tension by a tensile brittle-failure stress. Aluminum foams have become also an attractive material as blast protective layers due to their desirable compressive properties. With different material engineering techniques (as, for example double-layer foam cladding) they can be customized to achieve the most desirable properties. Energy absorption capacity of foams microstructures under blast load was analytically confirmed based on a rigid-perfectly plastic-locking foam model Initial research indicates that energy absorbed by the cladding is much larger than that under quasi-static conditions due to strain rate effect. In this paper a numerical model of a closed cell aluminum foam idealistic microstructure was presented. The quasi static compression tests were carried out with the use of LS Dyna computer code. Then the sample was numerically loaded with the blast wavefrom detonation of explosives and its behavior was analyzed. The results ofboth analyses were compared.