Fatigue and damage accumulation in open cell aluminium foams

Open-cell aluminium foams are a relatively new material with interesting uses in different engineering applications. This study investigates the fatigue behaviour and damage accumulation of metal foams via a fatigue analysis (Weibull E-N model), a failure criterion (the relation among the prepeak compressive and tensile slopes, the reduction in the tensile stress, or the reduction in the compressive stress), and a mathematical approach (linear, quadratic, or exponential). As a result of combining the 3 mathematical approaches and 3 failure criteria, different approaches are obtained, analysed, and validated by using experimental data. Finally, the proposed approaches can be used to directly obtain the damage accumulation level for open-cell metal foams under fully reversed cyclic loading as a function of the number of cycles applied, the total strain amplitude, and the initial damage accumulation condition.