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The development of an efficient procedure for 3d modeling and finite element simulation of metal foams is one of the greatest challenges for engineer researchers nowadays. Creating 3d CAD model is alone a demanding engineering task due to its extremely complex geometry, and the proper finite element analysis process is still in the center of the research. The increasingly widespread application of the metal foams, e.g. in vehicle and medical industry, requires this knowledge in the design phase. A closed-cell metal foam is studied using different analyzing methods where the aim is to collect information about the composition and geometry (structure) that is satisfactory for the later research. Using statistical methods microscopic, X-ray and surface analyzing studies on the specimens produced according to the concerning standard are evaluated. The main goal of this part of the project is to obtain structural information and to determine the homogeneity or the in-homogeneity property of the metal foam specimens taken from different locations.

This paper presents a novel solution for shape optimization of compressed rubber parts. The procedure is based on the finite element method (FEM). A special purpose FEM code written in FORTRAN has been developed for the analysis of nearly incompressible axi-symmetric rubber parts. Numerical stability of the code and sensitivity analysis of the FEM input parameters are investigated. The aim of the parameter optimization is to reduce the time consuming FEM computations for the optimization process. The objective of the optimization is to find the optimal shape of the investigated rubber parts with a specified load-displacement curve. A regression model is used to determine the connection between the input and output data calculated by the FEM.