Aluminum foams are generally 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 loading and this severely limits their use. Recent studies have shown that laser forming is an effective way to shape foam panels . In this paper, the laser forming of Al-Si closed-cell foam was investigated through experiments and numerical simulations.
Bending angle as a function of the number of passes at different laser power and scan velocity values was obtained for large- and small-pore foams. In the finite element analysis, both effective-property and cellular models were considered for the closed-cell foam. Multi-scan laser forming was also simulated to study the accumulative effect on the final bending angle. Results confirmed that temperature gradient mechanism (TGM) was dominant during laser forming of the closed-cell Al-Si foam material under the conditions considered. This paper further discussed the reasonableness and applicability of the two models. The effective-property model predictions generally agree with experimental results of multi-scan laser forming. The cellular model somewhat underestimates the temperature gradients in the thickness direction but significantly overestimates the stress level likely due to the fact that the non-homogeneity in pore shape, size and distribution was inadequately accounted for.