A novel high strain rate sensitive rigid polyurethane resin based syntactic foam

Abstract

Syntactic foams are closed cell structured foam materials and present improved properties for lightweight and high performance material requests. They have been widely used in naval, aeronautical, aerospace, civil, industrial, and automotive engineering applications on account of their good acoustical attenuation, excellent strength to weight ratio, vibration isolation, dielectric properties. In this study, a novel high strain rate sensitive syntactic foam was developed. A rigid polyurethane resin was used as a binder material. Glass bubbles were used as an additive for producing cell structure. Elastomeric silicone rubber resin were used to change elastic properties of the foam as an additional binder material. Quasistatic compression properties and high strain rate compression properties were obtained by using Instron Universal Tensile-Compression Machine and Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar experimental setup respectively. The results show that developed foams are low dense and very high strain rate sensitive materials. Consequently, developed foam can be used for the blast, impact or ballistic mitigation purpose as a coating material.