Abstract: Metallic foams have good potential for lightweight
structures for impact and blast mitigation. Therefore it is important to
find out the optimized foam structure (i.e. cell size, shape, relative
density, and distribution) to maximise energy absorption. In this
paper, quasistatic compression and microstructural characterization
of closed-cell aluminium foams of different pore size and cell
distributions have been carried out. We present results for two
different aluminium metal foams of density 0.49-0.51 g/cc and 0.31-
0.34 g/cc respectively that have been tested in quasi-static
compression. The influence of cell geometry and cell topology on
quasistatic compression behaviour has been investigated using optical
microscope and computed tomography (micro-CT) analysis. It is
shown that the deformation is not uniform in the structure and
collapse begins at the weakest point.