Investigation of aluminum foam use in avionic equipments

The aviation industry today is undergoing a significant transformation driven by ever-increasing demands and rapidly advancing technology. At the core of this transformation lies the optimization of aircraft performance. Within this context, the importance of weight reduction in the aviation industry has gained increasing significance, leading to studies that have yielded significant advantages in areas such as fuel efficiency, payload capacity, flight performance, and environmental sustainability. In the thesis work, research was conducted on the usability of an avionics device designed using closed-cell aluminum foam material under vibration profiles encountered by military helicopters. Accordingly, literature studies on foam material production, modeling, and finite element analysis were conducted, and foam material was initially modeled as a representative volume element with different pore sizes, and specimens were created. Static analyses were performed using the finite element method to obtain the material characteristics of the modeled foam material specimens, and these characteristics were reflected onto the mechanical components present in the avionics device through the use of homogenization techniques. Subsequently, modal analyses were performed to obtain the system's mode shapes, and using these results, random vibration analyses were conducted considering the vibration profiles specified for military helicopters by the MIL-STD-810G standard. Through the obtained results, comparisons and evaluations were made considering the deformation and stress levels experienced between Aluminum 6061 material and aluminum foam material with different pore sizes, thereby providing insights into the utilization of aluminum foam material in avionics devices.