Description: Low-density, highly compressible elastomeric foams are widely used as energy absorbing materials in passive safety systems in the automotive industry. Foams are also commonly used in packaging of hand-held and other electronic devices.

The low-density foam model in Abaqus/Explicit is intended to model the high strain-rate sensitive behavior of these materials under dynamic loading, such as in crash and impact applications. The model requires as input the stress-strain response of the material for both uniaxial tension and uniaxial compression tests. Rate-dependent behavior is specified by providing the uniaxial stress-strain curves for different values of nominal strain rates. Both loading and unloading rate-dependent curves can be specified to better characterize the hysteretic behavior and energy absorption properties of the material during cyclic loading.