Structure-Property Linkages of Aluminum Foams Marshall Johnson Materials Informatics – Progress Report 1

Why Metal Foams? Low density Favorable properties Applications Mechanical Thermal Electrical Acoustic Applications High surface-area applications, vibration resistance, energy absorption 1

Previous Work Modeling of effective thermal conductivity (λeff) for open cell aluminum foam Room for improvement? Reasonable to want both excellent thermal & mechanical properties – how do these correlate? 2

Goals Structure-property linkages with elastic mechanical properties Initial Goal: C11 component of elastic stiffness tensor Correlations between elastic properties and thermal properties

Dataset Generation 3507, 100x100x100 foam samples Optimally pack domain of spheres, generate Voronoi diagram from sphere’s centers Use Voronoi diagram triple points to form edges, quadruple points form junctions 3507, 100x100x100 foam samples 1 2 2

Example Foam Structures 5 Structural Properties Pore size Ligament thickness

Methodology Foam data in form of Matlab data file Convert to Abaqus input files Elastic simulations for C11 component of stiffness tensor Treat as 2-phase material Periodic boundary conditions Structure-Property linkage for C11 component Correlations between previously found thermal conductivity & C11 stiffness component

References Manufacturing Talk Radio, Metal Foam: A Wonder Material A. August et. al. Prediction of heat conduction in open-cell foams via the diffuse interface representation of the phase-field method