Aluminium foams obtained by injecting a gas into the liquid metal are prone to localization of strain and damage. Under compression, crushing bands form, multiply and propagate through the whole sample. A continuum model based on a compressible plasticity framework is presented that is suitable for the simulation of such strain localization bands. The importance of accounting for strain localization phenomena in structural computations is illustrated by finite element simulations of the compression of cube and tapered specimens, and of an indentation test. A regularization procedure is proposed to obtain mesh-independent results. (c) 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.