Bending behavior of cenosphere aluminum matrix syntactic foam-filled circular tubes

Abstract Thin-walled tubes filled with aluminum foam have been widely studied in the field of energy absorption. Embedding fly ash cenospheres into aluminum matrix provides a low-cost, yet effective solution to enhance its strength and energy absorption capability significantly, as shown in the authors’ previous study. In this paper, the bending performance of the developed cenosphere Al matrix syntactic foam (SF) is further investigated, and its dependence on geometrical features, including thickness of tube and diameter of cenospheres, as well as filled ratios is established. The result that bending resistance and energy absorption performance of the tubes are mainly governed by wall thickness and filled ratios is acknowledged. In parallel, numerical models were developed in LS-DYNA, and the simulation results were in good agreement with the test results, which suggest that such developed SF potentially will have extensive practical applications.