Development and Characterization of Foam Filled Tubular Sections for Automotive Applications

Crash safety requirement without much penalty in structural weight of automotive structures has provided scope to fill hollow sections with foams. Different classes of foams are used for this purpose—polymer foams and metal foams. Metal foams are prepared out of light metals such as aluminum, magnesium, though occasionally steel foams are also suggested in the literature. This paper presents the results of crushing, bending and damping characteristics of steel extrusions with and without foam filling. Polymeric foam and aluminum foam are considered for this study. Based on the experimental study, the following observations are made: (a) The force verses displacement characteristics of aluminum foam filled tubes show large resistance (at higher loading rates) during axial crush; polymeric foam filling did not show such a marked improvement in energy absorption characteristics, (b) The bending resistance of aluminum foam filled sections shows an improvement in bending by 60–200 % during 3-point bend testing, and (c) Vibration levels are found to be reduced in lateral direction for foam filled sections. This foam filled section was tried on typical section of a two-wheeler component.