Surfactants play an important role in forming, stabilizing, and setting urethane foams. Use of simulation with impact of surfactants can help better predict performances of foam formulations. This paper evaluates the relationship between surface tension and surfactant amount experimentally by using capillary rise method and developed a model to simulate impact of surfactants on polyurethane foam polymerization based on a mechanism that surfactants have a critical role in the initial stages of gel formation and through the point where viscosity is high enough to create resistance to support the foams. Bubble sizes were calculated based on the number of nucleation sites, gas generation rate, surface tension and bubble inner pressure. Since important properties of polyurethane foam, such as compressive strength, closed cell content, and thermal conductivity can be related to the bubble sizes, this model can be used to predict foam performance and to develop new foam formulations.
展开▼
