Micro-mechanics of Foam using Unit Cell (Closed Cell) Approach

Because of its wide range of properties, usages of foam in various applications are enormous, which normally cannot be met by fully dense solids. The foam is considered as a periodic array of unit cells. The unit cell taken for the analysis is tetrakaidecahedron. The objective of the present work is to understand the micromechanics of foam deformation and prediction of elastic properties by numerical simulation using FEA software ABAQUS for closed cell foam. These properties are compared with those available in literature. Translation symmetry of the unit cell alone is sufficient to get the property of the entire foam. The periodic boundary conditions are imposed on the unit cell. The values obtained from the present analysis give better results since the periodicity is maintained. The Young's modulus and shear modulus are the increasing functions of relative density while the Poisson's ratio is a decreasing function.