Finite Element Vibration Analysis of MHSS Based on 3D Tomography Image Processing

Well-known advantages of cellular metals are their high ability for energy absorption, good damping behaviour, sound absorption and a high specific stiffness. Metallic hollow sphere structures (MHSS) feature a new group of advanced composite materials characterised by high geometrical reproducibility leading to stable properties in comparison to foams. This paper presents a Finite Element (FE) model for vibration analysis of MHSS. Due to the fact that an extraordinary detailed model would exceed available computing resources we developed a proper FE model with special description for hollow spheres and interconnections. Our approach uses model configurations such as cubic centred, face centred or hexagonal closest packing structures. We perform vibration analysis using the real geometry gained by Computed Tomography (CT) images. The location, centre point and radius of each sphere have to be determined for a CT based simulation. Therefore, an image processing method will be presented in detail. The numerical results for different structures are compared with experimental data.