High energy absorbing micro-reinforced polyurethane foam/polyester sandwich composites

Resistance to impact loads is of high importance in different industries including automotive, aerospace and constructional sectors. One main approach is to use polymer composites filled with nano/micro materials. Besides this, the lightness of the parts is another pressing issue to be addressed. The latter leads to the utilization of light weight foams reinforced with a type of fillers. However, it has been shown that the filled foams still lack enough mechanical strength in particular impact resistance due to high porous structure of the foams. In this work, polyurethane foams were filled with carbon black (CB) as the reinforcing phase. To increase the specimens impact resistance, the use of polyester loaded CB composites to laminate the fabricated foams were hypothesized. The results indicated rather significant increase in the energy absorbance of the laminated specimens exhibited by the drop weight test on a digital strain gage-based load cell. It was shown that when ۵ wt% CB filled PU foams are laminated with ۱۰ wt% CB loaded PS composites, the absorbed energy increase by ۷۴۰% with respect to the pure PU foam parts. It was indicated that PS composites filled with ۵ wt% CB result in the greatest absorbed energy capability of the parts when the foams are reinforced with CB in loadings less than ۱۰ wt%. The work performed could find applications when high impact loadings are inevitable in structures while the lightness of the parts should be taken into consideration.

کلیدواژه ها:

Energy Absorbing ، Polyester ، Polyurethane Foam ، Drop Weight ، Sandwich composite