Numerical Calibration of Tensile and Compressive Failure of Bio-Epoxy Foam Core for Explicit Analysis using a Simplified Testing Approach

Abstract

There is an increased demand in many sectors to produce lightweight and sustainable structures to fulfill various requirements. One such example is within the automotive industry to provide eco-friendly vehicles whilst fulfilling structural safety requirements. In the rapidly developing industry, a reliable, quick method to model more complex behavior of materials, such as rate-dependency and failure criterion, is required for rapid prototyping and analysis via Finite Element Methods [1]. To model highly non-linear structural responses is typically laborious and requires a vast number of coupon tests that must follow strict forms and testing parameters through Quasi-static and Dynamic testing respectively. Furthermore, the numerical representation of the characterized foam material can often lead to instabilities in explicit calculations due to the unloading response, element failure and unrepresentative performance with consideration to other parts of the system. Thus, the selection of the material model is imperative to accurately and reliably represent the foam model in use. This study aims to showcase the simplified methodology of foam testing to characterize key structural material properties and develop the numerical representation via parameter tuning in blackbox optimization techniques for implementation within commercially available explicit solver, LSDYNA