• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.27 no.10
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• pp.1686-1694
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• 2003

The foam-filled tube beams can be used for the front rail and firewall structures to absorb impact energy during frontal or side collision of vehicles. In the case of side collision where bending is involved in the crushing mechanism, the foam filler would be effective in maintaining progressive crushing of the thin-walled structures so that much impact energy could be absorbed. In this study, bending behaviors of the closed-cell-aluminum-alloy-foam-filled stainless steel tube were investigated. The various foam-filled specimens including piecewise fillers were prepared and tested. The aluminum-alloy-foam filling offered the significant increase of bending resistance. Their suppression of the inward fold formation at the compression flange as well as the multiple propagating folds led to the increase of load carrying capacity of specimens. Moreover, the piecewise foams would provide the easier way to fill the thin-walled shell structures without the drawback of strength.

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.79-84
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• 2008

Metal foam is one of the most interesting materials with various multi-functional properties such as light weight, energy absorption, high stiffness and damping capability. Among them, energy absorption property has keen interests in the field of automotives for passenger protection. Nowadays, researches about pore size and porosity control of the foam are increased to correspond them. However, though energy absorption properties are improved, these results are not cost-effective process. In present research, however, as a part of improving the energy absorption property of metallic foams, 606X aluminum alloy was used for cell wall material which has higher strength than pure aluminum. And its morphological features are characterized. As a results, porosity and pore size are uniformity distribution with increasing foaming temperature in the case of 6061 alloy foams. 6063 alloy foam specimens have opposite tendency because of the influence of alloying element and viscosity of the molten melt.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.19-24
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• 2003

Potential applications of foam-filled section are the automotive structures. A foam-filled section can be used for the front rail and firewall structures to absorb impact energy during frontal or side collision. In the case of side collision where bending is involved in the crushing mechanics, the foam filler will be significant in maintaining progressive crushing of the thin-walled structures so that more impact energy can be absorbed. In this study, the manufacturing process of closed cell aluminum alloy foam filled stainless steel tube was studied, and the various foam filled specimens including piecewise fillers were prepared, tested and discussed about the bending behaviors.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.819-827
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• 2006

The stress-strain relation of aluminum (Al) alloy foam cell wall was evaluated by the instrumented sharp indentation method. The indentation in a few micron ranges was performed on the cell wall of Al-alloy foam having a composition or Al-3wt.%Si-2wt.%Cu-2wt.%Mg as well as its precursor (material prior to foaming). To extract the stress-stram relation in terms of yield stress ${\sigma}_y$, strain hardening exponent n and elastic modulus E, the closed-form dimensionless relationships between load-indentation depth curve and elasto-plastic property were used. The tensile properties of precursor material of Al-alloy foam were also measured independently by uni-axial tensile test. In order to verify the validity of the extracted stress-strain relation, it was compared with the results of tensile test and finite element (FE) analysis. A modified cubic-spherical lattice model was proposed to analyze the compressive behavior of the Al-alloy foam. The material parameters extracted by the instrumented nanoindentation method allowed the model to predict the compressive behavior of the Al-alloy foam accurately.

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.217-223
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• 2010

Foamed metal has become an attractive material, which has unique physical, thermal, acoustic, damping and mechanical properties, because large amount of pores are distributed in the metal matrix. Therefore, metal foam can be used for the light weight application in automotive, locomotive, aerospace fields. Aluminum foams have been developed successfully and will be employed in the next generation of energy absorption boxes. Magnesium alloys are most eligible candidate to substitute aluminum alloy, especially for lower density and higher damping properties in wide industrial fields. Magnesium alloy foams are expected to be particularly advantageous due to two thirds the density of aluminum. However, foaming magnesium have been weakness of high activity, difficult processing and very dangerous. In order to upgrade this problem, AM50 magnesium alloy which has better characteristic is safe to use through foaming time and alloying element in this study.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.1552-1558
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• 2011

In this paper, the automotive beam using aluminium foam is designed and the impact analysis is carried out. The analysis model is the beam of actual size with B- type section structure. At the frontal crash of low speed, ANSYS AUTODYN is used by predicting the behavior of deformation and its internal energy. By the use of 7075-T6 aluminum alloy, the weight is reduced as much as 55% than steel. The deformation at the bumper foam of aluminum is similar with that of steel and the impact energy reduction at aluminum is more than steel. The foam filled with aluminum as much as 50 % has more impact energy absorption than the completely filled aluminum foam.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.1145-1156
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• 2016

To study the effects of foam core density and face-sheet thickness on the mechanical properties and failure modes of aluminum foam sandwich (AFS) beam, especially when the aluminum foam core is made in aluminum alloy and the face sheet thickness is less than 1.5 mm, three-point bending tests were investigated experimentally by using WDW-50E electronic universal tensile testing machine. Load-displacement curves were recorded to understand the mechanical response and photographs were taken to capture the deformation process of the composite structures. Results demonstrated that when foam core was combined with face-sheet thickness of 0.8 mm, its carrying capacity improved with the increase of core density. But when the thickness of face-sheet increased from 0.8 mm to 1.2 mm, result was opposite. For AFS with the same core density, their carrying capacity increased with the face-sheet thickness, but failure modes of thin face-sheet AFS were completely different from the thick face-sheet AFS. There were three failure modes in the present research: yield damage of both core and bottom face-sheet (Failure mode I), yield damage of foam core (Failure mode II), debonding between the adhesive interface (Failure mode III).

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.83-87
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• 2007

Aluminum plates of the same materials as the foam were attached by the casting process inserting the foam as a core to investigate the tensile property of open cell foams. Tensile properties of the open cell 6063 aluminum alloy foam of $10{\sim}30$ PPI were measured before and after heat treatment. Densities of test specimens were between 0.14 and $0.29g/cm^3$. Tensile strength of the 6063 aluminum foam after heat treatment showed little change. C values were in the range of $0.41{\sim}0.87$ for as cast foams and $0.11{\sim}0.27$ for T6 heat treated foams in the eq. of ${\sigma}^* _{pl}/{\sigma}_{ys}=C({\rho}/{\rho}_s)^{1.5}$, and increased with increase in the cell size.

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.94-100
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• 2004

Gas porosity which is a common defect in aluminum alloy casting, is also thought to be severer in aluminum alloy castings produced by lost foam process due to the pyrolysis of the polystyrene foam pattern during pouring. Fundamental experiments were carried out to evaluate the effect of process variables such as the melt treatment, the cooling rate and pouring temperature on the density and mechanical properties in A356.2 castings with simple bar shape. The density of grain refined specimen was slightly lower than that of degassed one, but was higher than that of no treated one and that of shot ball packed specimen was higher than the other specimens. The tensile strength and elongation were in the ranges of $200{\sim}230MPa$ and $0.5{\sim}1.5%$ respectively. The density and hardness of lost foam cast specimens decreased with increase in pouring temperature.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.388-393
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• 2004

A comprehensive numerical study on the three point bending behavior of Aluminum foam-filled stainless steel tube has been performed. Aluminium alloy foams with various densities were produced and their mechanical properites were evaluated. Finite element(FE) analysis of three point bending test was performed to evaluate bending behavior of foam filled cylindrical structures. Results showed that foam filling offered remarkable increase of bending resistance and enhanced the crashworthiness of the structure. It turned out to prevent the inward fold formation at the compression flange, resulted into the multiple propagating folds and increased the load carrying capacity.