Abstract This study presents a novel multi-method approach to investigate the influence of void shape and aspect ratio on the crashworthiness of closed-cell aluminum foams, to optimize energy absorption under impact loading. Although aluminum foams are widely recognized for their energy dissipation capabilities in automotive and aerospace applications, the relationship between void geometry and crash performance remains insufficiently explored. A combined methodology integrating advanced Finite Element Analysis (FEA) in Abaqus and micro-morphological modeling in Digimat was employed to simulate foam behavior under dynamic compression. The study systematically evaluated three void geometries spherical, cylindrical, and prismatic and three aspect ratios (1.0, 0.9, and 0.8) to establish structure property relationships. The results indicate that prismatic voids with lower aspect ratios, particularly 0.8, exhibit superior energy absorption compared with the other configurations. These findings provide a new framework for designing cellular architectures with enhanced crashworthiness and offer a robust methodology for optimizing impact-resistant structures.
Tesfaye et al. (Sun,) studied this question.