Proceedings of 2011 NSF Engineering Research and Innovation Conference, Atlanta, Georgia Grant #1000334

Steel foam material processing, properties, and potential structural

applications

Sanjay R. Arwade
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Jerome F. Hajjar
Northeastern University

Benjamin W. Schafer
Johns Hopkins University

Mohammadreza Moradi
University of Massacusetts, Amherst

Brooks H. Smith
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Stefan Szyniszewski
Johns Hopkins University

Abstract: Steel foam is a material that can now be
produced at the laboratory scale using a variety of
different processes that create materials with a variety
of different morphologies. Steel foam has not,
however, been adopted in structural applications. In
this paper we review some of the methods available for
processing steel foams and the material properties that
result from those processes, and demonstrate a possible
application of steel foam in mitigating instability in
structural members susceptible to local instability.

1. Introduction: Foam and cellular materials have
been produced from base materials that include
polymers, ceramics, and metals such as titanium,
aluminum, and copper, and such foams have been
applied to solve engineering problems primarily in the
aerospace, automotive, and process control domains.
Steel is one of the most widely used engineering
materials, yet today no foam using steel as the base
material is commercially available. Perhaps because of
the lack of commercial availability of steel foam, no
applications have been developed or widely
implemented.
Research conducted over approximately the
last 10-15 years has shown that it is possible to
fabricate steel foams at the laboratory scale and that
these foams can be made to have potentially desirable
mechanical properties. Despite these substantial
advances in the materials science of steel foams, a
commercially available product remains elusive, and
therefore structural designers have not begun to explore
the potential benefits of using steel foam in civil
structural applications. To date, the only experimental
investigations of the potential use of steel foam in
structural applications, as opposed to material
characterization tests, have been to test some one foot
long steel foam filled tubes [9] and some 40mm long
steel foam beams [4] to failure.
The dual purposes of our research project are:
(1) to experimentally characterize steel foams with
respect to their cyclic, tensile, and shear response,
properties that are critical to structural performance but
are essentially unknown for steel foams; (2) to develop
and computationally test candidate applications of steel
foam that will improve the performance of civil
structures by, for example, improving energy
dissipation or mitigating local structural instabilities.
In this paper, which represents the first six
months of progress in the project, we first present a
brief review of the current state-of-the art with respect
to steel foam manufacturing and processing. Next, a
review of the mechanical properties of steel foams
produced by each of the processing methods. Finally,
preliminary results that indicate that deploying steel
foam in thin-walled structural members has the
NSF GRANT # 1000334
NSF PROGRAM NAME: Structural Materials and Mechanics
Proceedings of 2011 NSF Engineering Research and Innovation Conference, Atlanta, Georgia Grant #1000334
potential to significantly improve resistance to local
instability or buckling.

2. Steel foam manufacturing processes: Table 1 lists
the manufacturing processes that have been
demonstrated to date for making steel foams. All of the
materials listed have been produced only in small
batched under laboratory, rather than commercial,
conditions. As can been seen from the included images,
a wide range of cell morphologies is possible using the
different processing methods, and foams with either
open or closed cells are possible. Investigators have
succeeded in fabricating steel foams with relative
Table 1: Steel foam fabrication processes, material design variables, relative densities, and cell morphology.
Process Typical Image Primary Variables
Min
Density
Max
Density
Open/Closed
Cells
References
Powder metallurgical


Granular foaming
agents (e.g. MgCO
3
,
CaCO
3
, SrCO
3
), cooling
patterns
0.04 0.65 Closed
[12]
Injection molding with
glass balls

Types of glass (e.g.
IM30K, S60HS)
0.48 0.66 Closed
[18]
Oxide ceramic foam
precursor


Ceramic / cement
precursor materials
0.13 0.23 Open
[16,17]
Consolidation of hollow
spheres

Methods for sphere
manufacture (e.g.
powder-coated
styrofoam, gas
blowing), method of
connecting spheres (e.g.
sintering, glue, metal
filler)
0.04 0.21 Either
[5,10]
Working and sintering
of bimaterial rods


Types of working
before sintering (e.g.
compacted, rod length),
filler materials
0.05 0.95 Open
[14]
Composite PM / hollow
spheres

Matrix material used,
casting may be done
instead of PM
0.32 0.43 Closed
[15]
SlipReactionFoam
Sintering

Dispersant, bubbling
agent, and quantity of
dispersant and bubbling
agent used
0.12 0.41 Open
[2]
Polymer foam precursor Polymer material used 0.04 0.11 Open
[1]

Proceedings of 2011 NSF Engineering Research and Innovation Conference, Atlanta, Georgia Grant #1000334
densities (! = !
f
/!
s
) that range from 0.04 to 0.95 times
the density of solid steel. In the definition of relative
density !, !
f
is the mass density of the foam and !
s
is
the mass density of the base material. Metal foams
currently available that use aluminum, titanium, or
copper as a base metals have relative densities in the
range 0.05 to 0.20, and have typically been used in
applications in which very high ratios of the material
stiffness to weight or compressive energy absorption to
weight are desired. A feature of such low density
foams is that they have very low material strength
relative to the base metal, with yield stress as low as 1%
of the base material yield stress at !

= 0.08 [7]. In
structural applications we expect the maintenance of
reasonable material strength to be critical to the
satisfactory performance of the material, and therefore
call particular attention the ability to achieve foams
with relative density greater than 0.40 using the powder
metallurgy and composite hollow sphere methods.
Although high relative density is also achievable using
injection molding with glass balls, the use of expensive
and fragile glass balls in the fabrication process will
likely restrict the potential commercialization of that
particular material, at least for civil engineering
applications. The working and sintering of bimaterial
rods can also produce high relative densities, but
creates an open cell morphology which is likely to be
disadvantageous in terms of corrosion resistance.
Furthermore, that process creates materials with strong
anisotropies in the material properties, a feature that
structural engineers prefer to avoid. Finally, although
the sintering of hollow steel spheres can produce
materials with relative density only up to 0.20, it is the
most widely investigated fabrication procedure, and is
likely the closest to commercialization. We therefore
intend to focus our investigations on the application of
steel foam to civil structures on materials produced by
powder metallurgy, sintering of hollow steel spheres, or
composite powder metallurgy / hollow steel sphere
processes.

3. Mechanical properties of steel foam: Foam
materials have typically been employed in mechanical
or aerospace applications in which they were asked to
undergo large compressive deformations at relatively
low stress, or provide substantial stiffness at extremely
low weight. For that reason, characterization of steel
foam material properties has focused exclusively on
compression testing of small rectilinear prisms of
material providing the elastic modulus and compressive
yield stress of the material.
Table 2 summarizes the published literature on
the mechanical properties of steel foam fabricated by
the various processes described in Section 2 and Table
2. In all cases, the number of experiments reported is
small, usually in the single digits. This reflects the
substantial challenges and costs still associated with the
production of steel foam. Table 2 reports values of the
elastic modulus and compressive yield stress. Several
of the papers also report material hardness, which is of
little consequence for civil engineering design, and
there exists only one published report of the tensile
capacity of a steel foam, which states tensile yield
stresses on the order of 1-10 MPa. We could find no
published reports on the cyclic or shear response of
steel foams, and both cyclic and shear loading
commonly arise in civil structural applications. Steel
foams with low relative density have yield stresses on
the order or 1% of typical yield stress values for bulk
steel, whereas when the relative density is closer to
0.50, steel foam yield stress of up to roughly 50% of
steel yield stress are achievable. These findings
highlight the potentially critical role that high density
foams might play in civil engineering design. Steel
foam elastic moduli vary from less than 1% of the bulk
property to as much as 5% of the bulk property. The
are low material stiffnesses, and point out that
Table 2: Summary of experimental characterization of steel foam material properties

Proceedings of 2011 NSF Engineering Research and Innovation Conference, Atlanta, Georgia Grant #1000334
maintaining sufficient stiffness in structural
applications of steel foam will be a critical and
challenging objective. Table 2 clarifies the nearly
complete lack of material property characterization
beyond compressive properties, and provides strong
motivation for our efforts at cyclic, tensile, and shear
measurements.
Ashby [3] and Gibson & Ashby [6] have
provided mechanics-based expressions that purport to
predict the mechanical properties of cellular materials
as a function of the relative density and base material
properties. For example, the elastic modulus is related
to the relative density by
!
E
f
E
s
= A
Ec
0.5"
2
+ 0.3"
( )
(1)
for closed cell foams, and the yield stress by
!
"
f
"
s
= A
"c
0.5#
2/ 3
+ 0.3#
( )
(2)
or
!
"
f
"
s
= A
"c
#
3/ 2
(3)

for closed and open cell foams, respectively. In Eqs. 1,
2 and 3, A
Ec
and A
"c
are coefficients to be fit to
experimental data. Figures 1 and 2 show the mechanical
properties of Table 2 plotted against relative density
and compare those data to the predictions of Eqs. 1, 2
and 3plotted for a range of values for the coefficients
A
Ec
and A
"c
. The figures demonstrate that no single
choice of the coefficients A
Ec
and A
"c
can yield accurate
predictions of the material properties of steel foams
across all manufacturing processes, and that even
within a manufacturing process, the mechanical
properties appear to depend on more than the relative
density. These comparisons demonstrate that
substantial further research is required to develop
models that can predict the mechanical properties of
steel foam produced by any of the currently available
processes, and that any such models must incorporate
mechanics of deformation beyond a characterization of
the material relative density.

4 Example application of steel foam: Kremer et al. [8]
reported success in mitigating local buckling of a thin-
walled steel tube in bending by filling the maximum
moment section of the tube with a moderate density (!
= 0.40) steel foam. The composite tube exhibited
higher peak load and more ductility than the empty
tube. Because local buckling of structural members is
essentially a manifestation of plate buckling, we have
investigated the crushing and elastic critical loads of a
steel foam plate simply supported on four edges and

Figure 1: Comparison of predictive equations for
cellular material elastic modulus to experimental
measurements of elastic modulus for steel foams
produced by a variety of processing methods.
Experimental measurements for hollow sphere,
composite and powder metallurgy foams are shown, all
of which have closed cell morphology.


Figure 2: Comparison of predictive equations for
cellular material yield stress to experimental
measurements of compressive yield for steel foams
produced by a variety of processing methods.

loaded in pure compression. The main objective of this
preliminary study is to determine how varying the
relative density of the steel foam, while holding
constant the weight per unit area of the plate, affects the
elastic critical and crushing loads of the plate.

In order to hold the weight per unit length of the cross
section constant while reducing the relative density of
the walls (i.e. replacing the solid steel walls with steel
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
Youngs Modulus vs Relative Density
(with Gibson & Ashby closed!cell model)
Relative Density
N
o
r
m
a
l
i
z
e
d

Y
o
u
n
g
s

M
o
d
u
l
u
s

(
E
c
/
E
c
,
s
)


A
E
c
=1.0
A
E
c
=0.1
A
E
c
=0.55
Data
G&A max
G&A 1/2
G&A min
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
Compressive Yield Strength vs Relative Density
(with Gibson & Ashby open! and closed!cell models)
Relative Density
N
o
r
m
a
l
i
z
e
d

C
o
m
p
r
e
s
s
i
v
e

Y
i
e
l
d

S
t
r
e
n
g
t
h

(
!
c
/
!
c
,
s
)


A
!
c
=1.0
A
!
c
=0.1
A
!
c
=0.55
Composite HS
HS
Injection Mold
PM
Precursor
Closed G&A max
Closed G&A 1/2
Closed G&A min
Open G&A max
Open G&A 1/2
Open G&A min
Proceedings of 2011 NSF Engineering Research and Innovation Conference, Atlanta, Georgia Grant #1000334
foam walls), the thickness of the cross section has to be
increased.
The weight per unit area of a solid steel and
steel foam plate are
!
t
s
"
s
and
!
t
f
"
f
respectively, where
t
s
and t
s
are the solid steel and steel foam plate
thicknesses, and !
s
and !
f
are the solid steel and steel
foam densities. The constraint on the weight per unit
length of the member can then be expressed as,
!
t
f
=
t
s
"
(4)
which relates the thickness of the steel foam plate to the
thickness of the solid steel plate and the relative density
of the foam.
The material properties of the steel foam are
different from those of solid steel and depend on the
base metal properties and the relative density. Gibson
and Ashby [6] developed the expressions
!
E
f
= E
s
"
2
(5)
and
!
F
yf
= F
ys
"
3/ 2
(6)
that relate the elastic modulus and yield stress of the
foam to the relative density. Although we showed in
section 3 that equations such as these cannot predict the
mechanical properties of steel foams across a wide
variety of manufacturing processes, what will be shown
in the following calculations is that the exponent in the
expressions determines the interaction between steel
foam relative density and the crushing and elastic
critical load of the plate.
The plate we investigate has b = 92mm and
initial thickness t
s
= 1.73mm and the elastic modulus
and yield stress of the base steel are assumed to be 200
GPa and 345 MPa respectively. The material is
assumed to be perfectly plastic after yield.
The elastic critical load of the plate is
!
P
crf
=
4"
2
E
f
t
f
3
12 1#$
2
( )
b
(7)
By substituting the thickness and elastic modulus of
the steel foam plate (Eqs. 4 and 5) into Eq. 7 the elastic
critical load becomes
!
P
crf
=
4"
2
E
s
t
s
3
12 1#$
2
( )
b%
(8)
which depends inversely on the relative density, and
therefore increases when the relative density is
decreased since ! < 1 for a foam.
The crushing load of the plate is
!
P
yf
= F
yf
t
f
b (9)
which, by substitution of Eqs. 4 and 5, becomes
!
P
yf
= F
ys
t
s
b"
1/ 2
(10)

which depends on the square root of the relative density
and decreases when the relative density is decreased.
Thus, a steel foam plate would be expected to have a
higher buckling capacity and lower crushing capacity
than a solid steel plate with the same total mass,
geometry, and boundary conditions. Determining the
actual capacity of the plate requires analysis of the
postbuckling and inelastic buckling of the plate, both
topics of current investigation by the authors.
In order to further investigate the relationship
between plate properties and the crushing and elastic
critical loads, we allow the plate width and initial
thickness to vary and define a response surface P
cry
=
min(P
crf
,P
yf
), noting that this does not represent the
capacity of the plate since it does not consider
postbuckling or inelastic buckling behavior.
Figure 3 shows this response surface for the
case of variable plate width given by
!
P
cry
=
P
crf
=
3788838
b"
b < 80"
#3/ 4
P
yf
= 595b"
1/ 2
b $1.99"
#3/ 4
%
&
'
(
'
. (11)
One can observe that lowering the relative density
results in a transition from instability to crushing, and
that the value of ! at which this transition occurs
depends on the plate width.
Figure 4 shows P
cry
when the initial thickness
of the plate is allowed to vary. There is again a
transition between regimes in which the onset of elastic
stability and crushing initiate a departure from linear
response, and the curve delineating this transition
depends on the relative density. The value of the P
cry
is
given by

!
P
cry
=
P
crf
=
7986t
s
3
"
t
s
<1.99"
3/ 4
P
yf
= 31742t
s
"
1/ 2
t
s
#1.99"
3/ 4
$
%
&
'
&
(12)


Figure 3: Crushing and elastic critical response surface
for a simply supported plate loaded in pure compression
and made of steel foam with varying relative density
and width. Zones in which the response is governed by
elastic instability and crushing are indicated.
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
50
100
150
200
250
300
0
50
100
Plate Width (mm)
Relative Density
P
c
r
y

(
k
N
)
Buckling
Crushing
Proceedings of 2011 NSF Engineering Research and Innovation Conference, Atlanta, Georgia Grant #1000334



Figure 4: Crushing and elastic critical response surface
for a simply supported plate loaded in pure compression
and made of steel foam with varying relative density
and initial thickness. Zones in which the response is
governed by elastic instability and crushing are
indicated.

5 Conclusions: A review of the published literature on
processing and material properties of steel foams shows
that a variety of methods for fabricating steel foams
have been developed and implemented at the laboratory
scale over the past 10-15 years. Of these methods,
powder metallurgy, sintering of hollow spheres, and
composite powder metallurgy hollow sphere
processes appear to be the most promising for yielding
materials of potential use in civil structural applications
because of their relatively simple manufacturing
processes, simple cell morphology, and potential to
deliver high relative densities. Steel foams with a very
wide range of material properties have been
demonstrated, and these properties do not appear to
correlate well with predictive equations that treat only
the relative density as the material parameter. Finally,
we have evaluated the loads at which a simply
supported plate loaded in compression will crush and
suffer elastic instability when made of steel foam, and
have evaluated the dependence of those loads on the
plate thickness and width, and relative density of the
steel foam. We have found that a steel foam plate will
tend to experience elastic instability at a higher load
and crushing at a lower load than a solid steel plate of
equivalent mass and subject to the same loading.

6 Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the
United States National Science Foundation through
grant #1000334.

7. References:
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Sintered open-celled metal foams made by replication
method - manufacturing and properties on example of
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October 2004, Frth, Germany, p.89-92.
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0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1
1.5
2
2.5
0
50
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P
c
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k
N
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Crushing
Proceedings of 2011 NSF Engineering Research and Innovation Conference, Atlanta, Georgia Grant #1000334
[15] Rabiei A and Vendra L J (2009). A comparison
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