A Phase-Field Approach to Damage Modelling in Open-Cell Foams

Foams are complex and challenging materials. The damage process of the foam materials takes place on multiple scales changing several physical and structural properties of the material. In this study, the topology-based variable describing the connectivity state of a cell is introduced to formulate a non-variational phase-field model for the damage evolution in an open-cell foam. The material is considered consisting of the damaged and unimpaired phase with the proposed phase-field variable describing the separation of phases. The performance of the computational model is examined by means of the standard benchmarks such as tensile and simple shear test. The results show a qualitative correspondence with the two-dimensional artificial foam model used as a reference. Furthermore, the influence of the directional data extracted from the microstructure is investigated. The utilisation of the connectivity-based damage variable turns out to be a suitable choice for the simulation of the damage evolution in open-cell foam materials.