Digital material laboratory: Wave propagation effects in open-cell aluminium foams

This paper is concerned with numerical wave propagation effects in highly porous media using digitized images of aluminium foam. Starting point is a virtual material laboratory approach. The aluminium foam microstructure is imaged by 3D X-ray tomography. Effective velocities for the fluid-saturated media are derived by dynamic wave propagation simulations. We apply a displacement-stress rotated staggered finite-difference grid technique to solve the elastodynamic wave equation. The used setup is similar to laboratory ultrasound measurements and computed results are in agreement with our experimental data. Theoretical investigations allow to quantify the influence of the interaction of foam and fluid during wave propagation. Together with simulations using an artificial dense foam we are able to determine the tortuosity of aluminium foam.