Abstract: As a typical representation in various metallic foams, the aluminum foam is a kind of new material that integrates both structural properties and functional properties. With the improvement of production technology and the development of national economy, the application of the aluminum foam is becoming deeper and wider in the fields of aerospace engineering, transportation, construction engineering, machinery manufacturing and so forth. The complex load conditions in engineering application put forward higher requirements for the accuracy and practicability of the aluminum foam constitutive models. A great deal of experimental research and finite element numerical analysis on aluminum foam have been carried out by scholars both at home and abroad. With the proposal, verification and modification of various research constitutive models and numerical constitutive models, the understanding of researchers on the mechanical properties of aluminum foam becomes deeper and deeper. First of all, the development of experimental research and finite element numerical analysis on the mechanical properties of aluminum foam is briefly summarized in this paper; after that, the research progress and the present situation of constitutive model of aluminum foam both at home and abroad are emphatically reviewed; at last, aiming at the existing problems, the development trend of foam aluminum constitutive model is discussed and prospected. The important research directions in the existing aluminum foam constitutive model system are as follows: supplementing the characteristic parameters that are required for the characterization of constitutive model; introducing the anisotropic material assumption or the transversely isotropic material assumptions into the model building system; clarifying the weight of hydrostatic compression response and uniaxial compression response in material hardening; establishing hardening models which can truly and accurately reflect the hardening process of aluminum foam, such as the kinematic hardening model; introducing the research results of strain rate effect into the constitutive model and so forth.

Key words: aluminum foam, constitutive model, experiment, finite elements