This article describes investigations of the relations between mechanical properties (stiffness and strength) and structure of the cells of foam materials. A new analytical approach based on shell theory was used to study closed cell foams and the finite element method was used to study open cell and closed cell foams. Results were compared with experimentally obtained data for copper and polymethacrylimide foams and with results of prior analytical methods. Experimental results lie within the region bounded by the predicted behaviour of fully closed cell and fully open cell foams.
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