Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Laser Forming of Closed-Cell Aluminum Foam

Aluminum foams are generally very attractive because of their ability of combining different properties such as strength, light weight, thermal, and acoustic insulation. These materials, however, are typically brittle under mechanical forming, and this severely limits their use. Recent studies have shown that laser forming is an effective way for foam panel forming. In this paper, the laser formability of Al–Si closed-cell foam through experiments and numerical simulations was investigated. The bending angle as a function of the number of passes at different laser power and scan velocity values was investigated for large- and small-pore foams. In the finite element analysis, both effective-property and cellular models were considered for the closed-cell foam. Multiscan laser forming was also carried out and simulated to study the accumulative effect on the final bending angle and stress states. The maximum von Mises stress in the scanning section was on the order of 0.8 MPa, which was lower than the yield strength of the closed-cell foam material. This paper further discussed the reasonableness and applicability of the two models.