Improvement of FEA estimations for compression behavior of Mg foams based on experimental observations

• The effect of the porosity on Young’s modulus for Mg foams was analyzed.
• Experimental results and FEA estimations were compared.
• The introduction of a correcting equation improved the estimated results.

This work reports the comparative compression behavior between Finite Element Analysis (FEA) estimations and experimental results, for Mg foams with regular pore size and porosities ranging from 25% to 45%, obtained by means of powder metallurgy. Results showed an important decrease in the Young’s modulus as the porosity increases for both, the experimental results and FEA estimations. Due to the presence of interconnected pores and additional porosity for the manufactured foams, a correction equation was introduced to the predictions to avoid mismatched results originated from the differences between the foams and the FEA models. Estimations obtained using this equation were in good agreement with the experimental results, showing that the use of FEA is an interesting tool for predicting the mechanical properties of metallic foams before the design and fabrication, even when the modeled pore network presents important differences compared to the foam experimentally produced.

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