Evaluation of foam concrete physical properties and mechanical response under indentation
type: CreativeWork
description: Lightweight foam concrete is a widely accepted construction material with a controllable low strength. Conventional use of this material is often seen in applications such as excavatable landfilling or thermal isolation. Different from solid material, this cellularized cementitious foam tends to exhibit extensive plastic deformation when loaded to failure, accompanied by considerable energy dissipation. Taking advantage of this crushable nature, a novel usage of foam concrete is found in impact-absorbing applications. Unlike structural concrete, the functional application of foam concrete also shows good feasibility for accommodating high-volume recycled fine particles. This potential brings a promising prospect to pursue the green engineering concept with foam concrete. However, the implementation of this material as an energy absorber is awaiting a more in-depth investigation of its key material attributes to the mechanical especially crushing performance. In this dissertation, several critical aspects of the mechanical performance of lightweight foam concrete are investigated using a series of advanced characterization techniques, as well as computational approaches. The elastic modulus of foam concrete is measured via a nondestructive vibrational frequency test. The crushing behavior is characterized based on the load-displacement response in a penetration test. Build on these, further attention is paid to the foam densification phenomenon using correlation analysis, digital image correlation (DIC), and X-ray computed tomography (CT). The material failure process of foam concrete is explained based on the experimental observations. A constitutive relationship is further established for elaborating the relationship between foam densification and mechanical performance. Using the measured material properties, the crushing behavior of foam concrete is investigated using a smoothed particle hydrodynamic (SPH) simulation, where good agreements with the experimental o…
abstract: Lightweight foam concrete is a widely accepted construction material with a controllable low strength. Conventional use of this material is often seen in applications such as excavatable landfilling or thermal isolation. Different from solid material, this cellularized cementitious foam tends to exhibit extensive plastic deformation when loaded to failure, accompanied by considerable energy dissipation. Taking advantage of this crushable nature, a novel usage of foam concrete is found in impact-absorbing applications. Unlike structural concrete, the functional application of foam concrete also shows good feasibility for accommodating high-volume recycled fine particles. This potential brings a promising prospect to pursue the green engineering concept with foam concrete. However, the implementation of this material as an energy absorber is awaiting a more in-depth investigation of its key material attributes to the mechanical especially crushing performance. In this dissertation, several critical aspects of the mechanical performance of lightweight foam concrete are investigated using a series of advanced characterization techniques, as well as computational approaches. The elastic modulus of foam concrete is measured via a nondestructive vibrational frequency test. The crushing behavior is characterized based on the load-displacement response in a penetration test. Build on these, further attention is paid to the foam densification phenomenon using correlation analysis, digital image correlation (DIC), and X-ray computed tomography (CT). The material failure process of foam concrete is explained based on the experimental observations. A constitutive relationship is further established for elaborating the relationship between foam densification and mechanical performance. Using the measured material properties, the crushing behavior of foam concrete is investigated using a smoothed particle hydrodynamic (SPH) simulation, where good agreements with the experimental o…
author: Song, Yu
language: en
keywords: foam concrete, cellular concrete, solid foam, mechanical property, crushing, energy absorption, impact absorption
date published: 2020-03-02T22:38:58Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:47Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/106496