Abstract
Target of the presentation is to find the material of load-bearing plate with minimum mass for given loading, boundary conditions and geometric dimensions. The various materials used in numerical solutions are steel, aluminium, magnesium, aluminium foam and also the aluminium-foam sandwich (aluminium foam reamed with steel mesh). Solution is executed in the elastic and also in plastic domains. All designed load-bearing plates can not exceed a defined value of deformation. The plastic stress in aluminium foam and the yield point are computed with combine measure of stress.
In the solutions the optimised parameter (changed during the computation) is the thickness of the plates.
The main goal of these solutions is to show structurally effective design of machine part based on closed cellular metals. The direct technical applications can be everywhere where the target is minimise the weight of the used panels with the requirements of absorbing an impact energy or for minimum deformation under defined load.