Modeling the deformation of thin-walled circular tubes filled with metallic foam under two lateral loading patterns

Abstract

Thin-walled circular tubes with metallic foam fillers are widely used in various engineering fields. This work examines the plastic behavior of thin-walled circular tubes filled with metallic foam under two different lateral loading patterns, by using both analytical and numerical methods. Two types of loading indenters, including a line load and a rigid plane, are considered. There have been very few studies on the lateral compression of foam-filled circular tubes crushed by a line load or a rigid plane. The analytical models assume that the tubular wall material is rigid and ideally plastic, and that the metallic foam fillers maintain a constant resistance known as plateau stress. Using the principle of virtual velocities, we derive succinct explicit solutions for the crushing forces as well as deformation characteristics in regard with the radius of the tubes, the flow stress of the tubular wall and the plateau stress of the filled foam under the two loading conditions. Finite element analysis is performed using the ABAQUS2023/Explicit code to model aluminum alloy circular tubes filled with aluminum foam. A comparison and analysis of the deformation characteristics of the tubular top generator and foam cross-sections are conducted. The proposed analytical crushing forces and deformation properties obtained herein agree well with the numerical simulation results and outperform previous theoretical models, which may serve as valuable formulations for the engineering application.