Article Dans Une Revue Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids Année : 2026

Physically-based modeling of polymer foam microstructures: from realistic cellular microstructures and their variabilities to mechanical properties

Résumé

It is generally agreed that an efficient model for predicting the mechanical behavior of solid foams should present microstructural features similar to real ones. However, most theoretical results in foam micro-mechanics are based on periodic space-filling unit-cell which do not reflect the inherently random nature of real foams. The Kelvin cell or the Weaire-Phelan (WP) structure are by far the most used and yet they are only found is specialised foam. The present study therefore uses a versatile approach based on a thermodynamic description of interacting bubbles growth to produce representative volume elements of closed-cell foams with a wide variety of morphologies. Using a small set of parameters, one can build morphologies with local features specific to non-equilibrium foams. The behavior of the internal gas phase during the formation process is also modelled while assuming the absence of diffusion in the continuous medium. A sequence of mechanical micro-models is developed to study the complete compressive response ranging from the initial elastic response followed by the extensive plateau stress all the way up to the densification zone. The results are discussed in view of randomness of the cellular microstructure, anisotropic cell shapes effects and inner gas pressure effect. This is a major improvement over previous studies which lack variability in topological arrangement for 3D representative volume elements or which use periodic boundary conditions known to influence the way macroscopic instabilities develop.

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hal-05375439 , version 1 (20-11-2025)

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T. Roland, Gaël Ginot, Mouhamadou Dabo, C. Gauthier, W. Drenckhan, et al.. Physically-based modeling of polymer foam microstructures: from realistic cellular microstructures and their variabilities to mechanical properties. Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, 2026, 206, pp.106387. ⟨10.1016/j.jmps.2025.106387⟩. ⟨hal-05375439⟩
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