Physics

Aerospace engineering

Microsphere

Polyurethane

Composite number

Engineering

Dissipation

Composite material

Compression (physics)

Viscoelasticity

Materials science

Syntactic foam

Glass microsphere

Damage tolerance

Compressibility

Chemical engineering

Polymer

Thermodynamics

Composites Part B Engineering

In the present work, polymer-based syntactic foams were studied under cyclic compression in order to investigate their compressibility, recoverability, energy dissipation and damage tolerance. These syntactic foams were manufactured by adding hollow polymer microspheres of various sizes and wall thicknesses into a polyurethane matrix. The associated loading and unloading curves during cyclic testing were recorded, revealing the viscoelastic nature of the materials. SEM images of the samples were obtained in order to study potential damage mechanisms during compression. It was observed that these syntactic foams exhibit high elastic recovery and energy dissipation over a wide range of compressional strains and the addition of polymer microspheres mitigates the damage under compressional loading.

Compression properties of polymeric syntactic foam composites under cyclic loading