Micro-mechanical model of a hyper-elastic open-cell foam

P. Hrd af Segerstad & S. Toll

Department of Applied Mechanics, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

ABSTRACT: A micro-mechanical hyper-elastic constitutive theory for open-cell foams at large strains is
developed. The solid phase in the foam is represented by a network of struts each connecting to two vertex
points. The strut deformation is assumed to depend directly on the macroscopic deformation and the forces
carried by a strut are linked to the change of its vertex-to-vertex vector. The constitutive model was compared
with a compression experiment on an isotropic polyether urethane foam and good agreement was obtained.

1 INTRODUCTION region III. The struts then continue to buckle until

The purpose of the present work is to develop a hyper-
elastic constitutive model of an open-cell foam with a
random micro-structure at large strains until onset of
densification, see figure 1 and figure 2. The appear-
ance of the stressstrain response of foams under
compression can usually be divided into four dis-
tinct regions, denoted I, II, III and IV. In region I
and II, the foam response is approximately linear, due
to tension (region I) and compression (region II). At
a critical individual stretch (c ) in compression, the
struts lose stability and buckle. The axial stiffness
of the strut is reduced drastically to form a plateau,
neighboring struts come into contact. This densifica-
tion, region IV, initiates at c i and continues towards
c
f where the response of the foam approaches that of
the homogeneous solid phase.
Micro-mechanical foam models typically belong to
either of two categories: (i) cell-models which con-
sider some smallest dominant structural member of
the foam, e.g. one or a few struts, and (ii) RVE-models
which explicitly model a representative volume ele-
ment (RVE) containing a large number of struts.
Gent and Thomas (1959) developed a cell-model
based on a single-strut cell with affine motion of the
strut endpoints. The model is restricted to moderate
strains since it ignores any re-orientation of the struts.
The compressive response of struts undergoing buck-
ling is modeled in a semi-empirical manner. Zilauts

ii Tension

cf ci c
-1= ii
IV III II I

Compression

Figure 2. Normal stress-stretch curve for a general

Figure 1. Micro-structure of an open-cell polyether ure- hyperelastic foam. I-II. Linear elasticity, III. Plateau, IV.
thane foam, RP28145. A = 400 m. Densification.

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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
and Lagzdin (1992) used a similar approach. A pin 2 THEORY
joined straight linear elastic single strut is adopted as
the structural element and affine motion of strut end- The material occupying a region 0 in the reference
points is assumed. This model allows for truly large configuration is on the micro-level understood to con-
deformations, including strut reorientation, and also sist of two phases, one solid phase s0 and one pore
incorporates a more sophisticated treatment of the phase f 0 = 0 s0 . The solid phase s0 is assumed
response due to strut buckling. Warren and Kraynik to consist of a network of struts r i each connecting to
(1991), introduced the more realistic and less restric- two vertex points X i 0 and X
i 0 .
tive assumption of affine motion of strut midpoints Under deformation the region 0 is mapped to the
rather than endpoints. This allows for the non-affine current configuration  such that the vertex points
stretching of a strut which is due to bending of the con- X i and X
i can be found at x i  and x
i . Our
necting struts. The model is more complicated than approach is to characterize each strut by the vectors
the single strut models, since it involves solving the
forces on four struts simultaneously. No strut buck-
ling is included in their analysis. Wang and Cuitio
(1999) use the same kinematic assumption as Warren and
and Kraynik, but the solution is obtained by minimiza-
tion of energy for the unit-cell consisting of four struts.
This allows the authors to examine more general con-
figurations, although with the inherent limitation of where N i and ni are the material and spatial directors
periodicity. Despite their proven utility, one of the of the strut respectively, such that
drawbacks of the cell-model approach is that most
foams tend to have a random distribution of nuclei
which results in random cell sizes in contrast to peri-
odically distributed nuclei which are represented by
and
cell-models.
In RVE-models, the balance equations on the RVE
are typically solved by the finite element method
(FEM). Relevant background here is Shulmeister
(1998) and Zhu andWindle (2001), where the foam is i.e. ||N i ||, ||ni || = 1, i = 1 . . . N , see figure 3.
modeled as a three-dimensional framework of slender The average Cauchy stress within the strut can be
struts, regular as well as random based on the Voronoi expressed as
technique. A benefit of such computations is that one
may distinguish different mechanisms and study the
effect of non-uniform distributions of strut parameters
and connectivity. Thus Shulmeister (1998) shows that
Youngs modulus and Poissons ratio increase strongly Further f i is the resultant force that act on the strut i at
with increasing disorder. Further, Van der Burg (1997) the vertex point x
i and vi is the volume of the strut i.
conclude that the normal deformation of the struts The macroscopic stress in the continuum is obtained
in the foam is of increasing importance relative to
bending deformation of struts for foams with higher x(X,t)
density. The main drawback of RVE-models is the high Ni
computation cost. Another limitation is the difficulty
of choosing the appropriate boundary conditions for ni
the RVE.
We propose here to develop the single strut model, ri0
because it will be considerably easier to generalize to X'i
inelastic responses, it is more adaptable with respect x'i
to random micro-structures than multi-strut models ri
and is numerically inexpensive. The model developed Xi
may be viewed as a generalization of the Zilauts and t=0 xi
Lagzdin (1992), by (i), inclusion of transverse forces
and (ii), a simple correction of the generally over-
stiff affine assumption. Like Zilauts and Lagzdin we t>0
assume that the struts are free to deflect between their
ends; so the model is not applicable to the densification
regime i.e. region IV in figure 2. Figure 3. Affine motion.

102
Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
as the volume average of the local stress within the where is the macroscopic stretch along the direction
struts, of the strut, defined by

In equation (14) N is the original director of the strut

defined in equation (3) and C = F F the macroscopic
T

right Cauchy-Green deformation tensor. The rotation

is further assumed to coincide with the rotational part
of the affine motion, such that
where  is the solid volume fraction of the foam and
n is the number-fraction of struts, such that
Hence we now obtain the relation between r and r 0 ,
c.f. equation (8),

and V is a sufficiently large volume of the con-

tinuum. The latter implies the assumption that the
We now define a vector w and a corresponding
micro-scale
macro-scale.
transverse unit vector t as
The model will be based on the following assump-
tions. First the current strut vector r is assumed to
be a function of r 0 and the macroscopic deformation
i.e.,
gradient F, where R is the orthogonal macroscopic rotation tensor.
Combining equation (15) and (17), we now obtain

Secondly the force carried by the strut is assumed to

be a function of the strut deformation, in relation to
the macroscopic deformation, 2.2 Dynamics of strut
The resultant force f that keeps the individual strut in
equilibrium can be divided into an axial component f n
and a transverse component f t
2.1 Kinematics of strut
To relate the strut deformation to the macroscopic
deformation gradient F, the simplest reasonable see figure 4. The axial force is associated with the
assumption is the affine motion spatial director of the strut defined in equation (4),
and its magnitude a function of the stretch ,

where F is the macroscopic deformation gradient.

The transverse force is associated with the spatial
transverse director of the strut, defined in equation
(18), and its magnitude a function of w,
and (X , t) is the non-linear deformation map between
0 and , see figure 3. Thus defining the stretch of
a strut such that
To allow for a change of response due to buckling of
the strut at a critical axial stretch c < 1 we propose a
axial response function of the form
where r =||r|| and r0 = ||r 0 ||. Since the assumption of
affine motion (10) in general is over-stiff, an additional
degree of freedom c is introduced. Here c represents
the reduction of axial strain due to a struts relatively
high axial stiffness compared to the stiffness of the
network to which it is connected. We propose the linear where 1 fn and 2 fn are the response functions for
relation > c and < c , respectively. Judging from results of
large-deflection beam theory, Dario Aristizbal-Ochoa
(2004), Mattiasson (1979), the axial force in the post

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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
 ft
m
fn
m 10
ft
Figure 4. Forces and couples on strut.
buckling regime is roughly linear in the strain 1.
We thus propose a bi-linear response for the axial
response,
where k1 is the tensile stiffness of the unbuckled
strut and k2 < k1 is a reduced post buckling stiffness.
Requiring that 1 fn = 2 fn at = c , gives
This yields the axial force
Similarly, the response function
for the transverse force in equation (21) is again in
view of results in Dario Aristizbal-Ochoa (2004) and
Mattiasson (1979) proposed to be linear in w:
Now the total force on a strut can be obtained by
introducing equations (20), (21), (26) and (28) into
equation (19),
Finally introducing the equations (16), (19) and
(6) together with n = n0 J 1 yields the constitutive
equation:
where J =det(F),
and f is given by equation (29).
Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
0
2
4
kN/m2
fn
6
8
12
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 0
h/h0
Figure 5. Three hysteresis loops on top of each other.
3 EXPERIMENTAL
Compression experiments were performed on a
polyether urethane foam RP28145 with the density
= 23.8 kg/m3 . The material was cut into cylindri-
cal specimens with a height h0 = 25 mm and diameter
D = 100 mm.
First the foam were examined by Scanning Electron
Microscopy (SEM) to characterize its microstructure
in both the rise and transverse direction, see figure (1).
From investigating the SEM photographs the aver-
age dimensions of a strut were determined to be:
r0 = 340 m and d0 = 60 m, and the foam had an
isotropic orientation distribution. Then the stressstrain
data in compression were obtained using an apparatus
developed for soft compressible solids such as foamed
rubbers and foamed plastics, Alkhagen and Toll
(2001). In the apparatus the sample material is con-
fined between two horizontal parallel circular plates
and deformed by imposing a vertical motion on one
plate relative to the other. The relative plate displace-
ment is measured by high accuracy laser sensors. The
stress is measured by means of a transducer, specially
designed to eliminate any influence of the free edge.
The specimens were cycled to moderate strains
(approximately 50%) to eliminate the Mullins effect
and then exposed to several hysteresis loops, in order
to determine the dissipation and ensure repeatability.
Finally the experiments were performed at a constant
displacement rate of 10 mm/min at temperature 23.3 C
and humidity 51.7%. In figure 5, three hysteresis loops
are plotted on top of each other, where the loading
curve is the lower set of points and the un-loading
curve is upper set of points, see figure 5.
4 RESULTS
The theory was compared to an uni-axial compres-
sion test. First the orientation distribution of struts
was discretised by a set of isotropically distributed unit
104
 0 model and, therefore influences the values of the
2
kN/m2
4
6
8
0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
h/h0
Figure 6. () Contribution from transverse force to the
Cauchy stress, () contribution from axial force to the
Cauchy stress, () total Cauchy stress, () experiment.
vectors: N i R3 , i {1 . . . N }. Then the parameter k1
was determined with respect to the initial linear elastic
region I,II, and c was given by the onset of buck-
ling. Further the parameters k2 and k3 were adjusted
to fit the plateau, region III. In figure 6, the contribu-
tion from the axial force to the macroscopic Cauchy
stress, and the contribution of the transverse to the
macroscopic Cauchy stress, together with the total
macroscopic Cauchy stress are plotted against an uni-
axial compression test.The theory made a good fit with
the experimental results when the parameters were set
to: k1 = 280.5N , k2 = 1.9N , k3 = 9.5N and c = 0.976.
The influence factor c was set to 1.0.
5 CONCLUDING REMARKS
The model is based on a representation of the foam
by a network of struts. The forces at the vertex points
are assumed to be a function of the strut deforma-
tion, which is assumed to depend on the macroscopic
deformation gradient. The model is so far under
the restriction of hyper-elasticity; thus no strain rate
effects are considered.
The reason for choosing the single-strut model is
that it will be considerably easier to generalize to
inelastic responses and that it is more adaptable with
random micro-structures than multi-strut models. It is
also numerically less expensive than multi-strut and
RVE models.
The overall stressstrain response of the foam is
governed by primarily axial deformations of the struts
including buckling. The contribution of transverse dis-
placement is small initially but becomes significant at
larger strains. This is mainly due to strut reorientation
and strut buckling but also because of the increasing
fraction of struts in under compression, see figure 6.
The hysteresis loops, see figure 5, show that energy
is dissipated during the experiments. This is not taken
into consideration in the hyper-elastic constitutive
Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
parameters. The average strut length r0  that is imple-
mented in the model does not take into account the
geometry of the vertex points, mentioned as dead vol-
ume in Gent and Thomas (1959). The dead volumes
set the boundary conditions at the vertices for the strut
and may play a significant role in the densification
regime. The bending of connecting struts, accounted
for byWarren and Kraynik (1991) and also torsion is
some what accommodated in this model by the param-
eters ki (i = 1 . . . 3). Since the theory depends on five
different constants, ki (i = 1 . . . 3), c and c , further
experiments are needed to determine these values. The
parameter cwas here set to 1.0.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was financed by the vehicle research pro-
gram (ffp) and the following participating companies:
Volvo Car Corporation, Volvo AB, SAAB Automobile
AB, Finnveden AB, Scania AB, Outokumpu Stainless
AB. The authors also wish to thank Gran Werner at
Carpenter Sweden AB for the supplying the foams and
Thomas Schuman for taking the SEM pictures.
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