Laguerre tessellations for elastic stiffness simulations of closed foams with strongly varying cell sizes

Abstract

The dependency of the elastic stiffness, i.e., Young’s modulus, of isotropic closed-cell foams on the cell size variation is studied by microstructural simulation. For this purpose, we use random Laguerre tessellations which, unlike classical Voronoi models, allow to generate model foams with strongly varying cell sizes. The elastic stiffness of the model realizations is computed by micro finite element analysis using shell elements. The main result is a moderate decrease of the effective elastic stiffness for increasing cell size variations if the solid volume fraction is assumed to be constant.