ANALYTICAL STUDY OF MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF SYNTACTIC FOAMS

摘要

Syntactic foams are a promising material for a variety of applications from space and deep searnexploration to commercial applications in the aerospace, marine, auto, and civil infrastructurernindustries. The ability to design syntactic foams through the selection and proportioning ofrnparticle and matrix materials provides a great deal of flexibility in catering these foams tornspecific loads (mechanical, thermal, electrical etc.) An understanding of how the constituentrnmaterial properties, packing arrangement, and percent loading of each affect the properties of thernsyntactic foam is necessary for optimizing foam designs. This study performs a finite elementrnanalysis of a syntactic foam consisting of hollow glass spheres in a low modulus polymer matrixrnwith a focus on understanding the effect of sphere size distribution and packing, as well asrnvolume fraction of particles, on mechanical properties. Three dimensional finite elementrnmodeling, using a representative volume element, was performed to predict mechanicalrnproperties of hollow-glass/polymer syntactic foams. The analytical study considers the effects ofrnthree different geometries under the same set of boundary conditions, over a volume fractionrnrange from 0 to 74%. It was found, as expected, that the predicted strength of the syntactic foamrndecreased with increased volume fraction of hollow spheres. It was also found that the hollowrnglass sphere size distribution and packing has a significant effect on strength and stiffnessrnpredictions.