Simulation of compression behavior and strain-rate effect for aluminum foam sandwich panels

• The study on strain-rate effect of AFS panels is new and novel.
• The study on strain-rate effect of foam material isn’t perfect.
• AFS panels are new materials and their researches need to be enhanced.

Based on the structure characteristics of aluminum foam sandwich (AFS) panels, two-dimensional random models with different relative densities are created by combing C++ and ANSYS/LS-DYNA software in this paper. Under different strain rates, compression behavior and strain-rate effect of AFS panels are investigated on the basis of the established finite element models. It is found that stress–strain curves of AFS panels are made up of three stages, namely elastic stage, plateau stage and densification stage. Moreover, the research results also confirm that the strain-rate effect of AFS panels is related to strain-rate sensitivity of matrix materials and effect of micro-inertia for AFS panels. With the increase of the relative density, the strain-rate effect of AFS panels is more obvious. Through comparison and analysis, the obtained results in this work are in good agreement with other research results, which confirms the feasibility and rationality of the models.