Aluminium foil at multiple length scales, mechanical tests and numerical simulations in Abaqus

Abstract: During its lifetime a beverage package is exerted to different loading conditions. Therefore an increased knowledge is needed to know how the packaging, and thus the thin layer of aluminium foil in the package, reacts to the prevailing loading scenario in a real case situation. In this thesis uni-axial tensile tests on aluminium foil samples cut out in 11 different orientations is done in order to characterize its anisotropic behaviour. To be able to reflect the behaviour of aluminium foil virtually, a material model is calibrated after key-values from the experimental results from three main orientations. To verify the material model, virtual uni-axial tensile test are executed and the results are compared with the experimental test results. The coefficient of determination between the virtual and experimental test turned out to be higher than 0.9, where 1 is a perfect fit. Furthermore, the production process of aluminium foil seems to aect the material properties, it is further investigated how and why and later concluded that the mechanical behaviour of aluminium foil is highly dependant on the microstructure of the material.