Assessment of Energy Absorption in Styrene Acrylonitrile Foams at Different Strain Rates

Abstract

Thorough work is done on investigating the strain-rate dependent behaviour of Styrene Acrylonitrile foam under compression loads. Quasi-static and dynamic compression tests (10s up to 10s) were carried out on foams with three different nominal densities, and Finite Element Method (FEM) simulation was developed using a 3D foam volume reconstruction to compare with the experimental results. A remarkable improvement at the energy absorption capacity occurred in foams with higher density related to the cellular topology. On the other hand, simulation results show close correlation with the failure mechanism registered by micrographs.