On an elastic-plastic transition zone in cellular metals

Summary A theory of plasticity is proposed for cellular metals to describe their elastic-plastic transition zone at small strain. Under certain conditions, only a plane strain test is necessary to determine the yield surface. The method to derive the elastic–plastic behaviour 14, 15] was originally proposed for classical metals. A simple cubic model of a cellular metal is used to demonstrate the method by the finite element method. Recommendations for the numerical simulation are given. The influence of the relative density and the hardening behaviour of the cell wall material is investigated.