Global stability of an aluminum foam stand-alone energy absorber

Aluminum alloy foam is the commonly used material in energy absorber design due to its excellent ability to dissipate energy in relation to density. This paper investigates the behavior of standalone absorber made of ALPORAS aluminum foam. The limiting parameters in the aforementioned application are the stability of absorber column and the risk of global buckling. Specimens with different slenderness ratio were crushed in order to find the transition point between local collapse of the cell walls and global buckling of the entire column. The ability of the aluminum foam energy absorber to work even after partial global buckling was presented.