Nanoindentation Applied to Closed-Cell Aluminium Foams

The chapter is devoted to the assessment of effective elastic properties of an aluminium alloy appearing on cell walls of a closed-cell foam system Alporas. The methodology used for this purpose is based on a bottom-up approach which includes identification of mechanically distinct material phases by means of combination of several analyses. Electron microscopy and image analyses are employed at first to identify miscrostructural and chemical entities. Mechanical properties of the distinct phases are studied by grid nanoindentation. Phase separation is performed using statistical deconvolution. Microstructural information is then used for the assessment of effective cell wall stiffness. Several analytical and numerical tools are tested and compared for this purpose. Good mutual agreement is achieved between the methods due to the close-to-isotropic nature of the phase dispersion within the cell wall volume.