Geometric modelling of metallic foams

Purpose – The aim of this work is the development of a procedure able to model the highly irregular cellular structure of metallic foams on the basis of information obtained by X-ray tomographic analysis. Design/methodology/approach – The geometric modelling is based on the feature “pore” characterized by an ellipsoidal shape. The data for the geometric parameters of the instances are obtained with a methodology which is driven by the pore volume distribution curve. This curve shows how much the cells, whose diameter belongs to a given dimensional range, contribute to the reduction of the total volume. Findings – The presented methodology has been implemented into a CAD tool consisting of a Matlab routine identifying the instances of the feature “pore” and a CATIA's macro modelling the closed cells foam. Originality/value – The presented methodology allows to obtain in an automatic way the CAD model of the complex structure of closed cell aluminium foam approximating by considerable accuracy both the density and the volume distribution of the real foams.