Compressive behaviour of aluminium foams at low and medium strain rates

Compressive behaviour of CYMAT aluminium foams with relative densities ranged from 5% to 20% has been studied experimentally in this paper. An MTS machine is employed to apply a compressive load at strain rates of 10−3–10+1 s−1 to these closed-cell aluminium foams. It has been found that the plateau stress is insensitive to the strain rate and is related to the relative density by a power law. Deformation is not uniform over the whole sample: it first occurs in the weakest band, followed by the next weakest bands after the first one has been completely crushed.