Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2021
26th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
Macroscopic mechanical behavior of polymeric foams via finite element analysis of a representative volume element
Submission Author:
Eliardo Gabriel Rezende Martins , SP
Co-Authors:
Eliardo Gabriel Rezende Martins, Heloisa Zanardi, Ricardo Afonso Angélico
Presenter: Eliardo Gabriel Rezende Martins
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2021.COB2021-1908
Abstract
Polymeric foam materials are used in engineering applications that require low-weight materials with low thermal conductivity, capability to withstand large deformations or impact energy absorption. The macroscopic foam mechanical behavior is a consequence of material microstructure and its intrinsic deformation mechanisms. Numerical tools are useful to predict the macroscopic mechanical behavior of foam materials from their microstructure. In particular, finite element simulations can be performed on Representative Volume Element (RVE) to estimate its effective mechanical properties. In this context, the present article aims to predict the macroscopic mechanical behavior of polymeric foams via finite element analysis of random RVEs. The authors developed a computational tool in Python with three modules: (i) RVE creation; (ii) creation of finite element model; and (iii) identification of macroscopic mechanical behavior. First, a Voronoi tesselation algorithm developed in Python enables creating the artificial foam microstructure. The RVE created is periodic concerning the geometry and the mesh, and it is imported into Abaqus finite element package for analysis. Second, the tool identifies the opposite correspondent nodes and applies a periodic boundary condition. Macroscopic strain components can be applied via two reference points. For each foam closed-cell, a self-contact interaction with hard-contact and no friction behavior is used. And lastly, the macroscopic stress and strain tensor components are obtained via the RVE domain integration. The tool is applied to predict the macroscopic behavior of a 60 kg/m³ polymeric foam for several strain states and with different microstructure characteristics. The simulations were performed with a elastic and an elasto-plastic material model. The RVE were analysed under controlled macrostrain history, which is applied via the reference points. The results are compared with analytical predictions. The RVE analysis enabled to simulate the linear elastic, plateau and densification stages of the foam under compression.
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