Material behaviour of a cellular composite undergoing large deformations

The intention of this paper is to give an overview of the recent investigations concerning the yield behaviour of a new cellular composite material. This novel material is a syntactic foam with a porous mineral granulate embedded in polyamide. The aim of the investigations is to develop a yield surface suitable for numerical simulations.To acquire the necessary data for the initial yield surface, a number of different experiments are shown. These experiments include quasi-static uniaxial tension, shear and compression tests as well as hydrostatic tests and experiments with blocked lateral deformations. The evolution of the yield surface into the range of large deformations is investigated and it can be shown that the specific plastic deformation energy is a suitable parameter for the hardening of the material.To exemplify the capabilities of the material and the material model, a prototype of a crashbox is tested under quasi-static conditions and compared to numerical results.