Numerical investigation on the plastic forming of aluminum foam sandwich panel based on three-dimensional mesoscopic and macroscopic models

This paper deals with the numerical study on the plastic forming of aluminum foam sandwich panel (AFSP). Three-dimensional (3D) tetrakaidecahedral (TKD) model and cubic-spherical (CS) AFSP model on the mesoscale as well as a 3D equivalent AFSP model on the macroscale were constructed first, and then, detailed finite element (FE) simulations on plastic forming processes of AFSP were carried out to gain further insight into the deformation characteristics and the forming defects. Plastic forming experiments of cylindrical AFSPs with different target radii were performed subsequently. It is found that mesoscopic TKD and CS AFSP models reflect more specific deformation characteristics and forming defects; however, the results obtained by the CS AFSP model are closer to the experimental results in terms of the forming defects, the shape errors, and the thickness variations. Furthermore, the CS AFSP FE model using 8-node linear brick with reduced integration and hourglass control elements saves the most calculation time among the three AFSP FE models.