Foams and other highly porous materials with a cellular structure have an attractive combination of physical and mechanical properties. Development, design, manufacturing, characterisation and application of cellular materials and structures, especially those made of metal base material, have been of significant importance in engineering in recent years. Their micro- and macroscopic properties make them also very attractive for use in automotive, rail, naval and aerospace industry as heat exchangers, filters, bearings, acoustic dampers, bio-medical implants and elements for energy absorption. New fabrication methods of cellular materials and structures have been developed for their more convenient and flexible use in different engineering applications. This helped to overcome the technological problems related to the control of cellular structure irregularity, also resulting in more homogeneous and regular pore distribution.
However, there are very few design rules for determining the most appropriate geometrical and material parameters of cellular materials in regard to individual application demands, which are often limited only to quasi-static problems. The macroscopic mechanical and thermal cellular material properties can be determined either with experiments or with computational simulations, whereby the latter is much cheaper. Computational simulations have to be based on appropriate models of cellular materials, where two distinct approaches are commonly used: full modelling approach, where the real or idealised cellular structure is considered, and homogenised approach, where properties of cellular structure are assigned to a continuum model. The first approach allows for more precise representation of cellular structure behaviour under loading, but the number of considered cells is strongly limited by the available computational resources. However, this approach is commonly used to derive the basic characteristics of a cellular structure representative volume, which can be later used in continuous homogenised models.
Numerous challenging and difficult questions remain opened in modelling and simulation of cellular structures under both static and dynamic, particularly impact loading. The aim of this session is to bring together researchers interested in the behaviour of cellular materials and development of corresponding computational models and design rules. In particular, talks related to the following topics will be welcome:
- geometrical modelling and computational representation of real cellular structures
- simulation of cellular material production process
- characterisation of mechanical properties by computational simulation
- impact engineering of cellular materials
- thermo-mechanical analysis of cellular materials
- simulation of FSI in cellular materials
- homogenisation techniques
- experimental testing of cellular materials for simulation
- industrial applications