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A Study on the Laser Forming of Closed-cell Aluminium Foam Sheets
M. Hoseinpour Gollo, M. Abbaszadeh and A. Hossein Roohi

Metal foams are a new material category that in the recent decade, are excessively used because of their good physical and mechanical properties such as low density and high stiffness. Regarding to their importance in engineering and other applications, modelling of metal foams are being considered and limited investigations have been carried out. The aim of this study is to introduce a novel method to model the closed-cell metal foams. Closer modelling of foam sheets, which has an amorphous structure, are achieved by subtracting spheres with a random spatial position and random radius from an initial sheet rather than repeating a unit cell. In this article, finite element (FE) analysis of the laser forming process on the modelled foam is carried out. Validation with a FE model shows a close agreement between numerical and actual results. On the other hand, for the first time the laser formability of closed-cell metal foams was investigated.

Keywords: CO2 laser, aluminium, metal foam, laser forming, closed-cell, geometrical modelling, finite element (FE)

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