Size effects in the mechanical behavior of cellular materials

Effective mechanical properties of cellular materials depend strongly on the specimen size to the cell size ratio. Experimental studies performed on aluminium foams show that under uniaxial compression, the stiffness of these materials falls below the corresponding bulk value, when the ratio of the specimen size to the cell size is small. Conversely, in the case of simple shear and indentation, the overall stiffness rises above the bulk value. Classical continuum theory, lacking a length scale, cannot explain this size dependent mechanical behaviour. One way to account for these size effects is to explicitly model the discrete cellular morphology. We performed shear, compression and bending tests using discrete models, for hexagonal (regular and irregular) microstructures. Even though discrete models give a very good agreement with the experiments, they are computationally expensive for complex microstructures, especially in three dimensions. To overcome this, one can use a generalized continuum theory, such as Cosserat continuum theory, which incorporates a material length scale. We fit the Cosserat elastic constants of the models by comparing the discrete calculations with the analytical Cosserat continuum solutions in terms of macroscopic properties. We critically address the limitations of the Cosserat continuum theory. (c) 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.