Reinforcement mechanisms of recycled glass beads reinforced thermoplastic foams under dynamic compressions: Fid-Bau Portal

Reinforcement mechanisms of recycled glass beads reinforced thermoplastic foams under dynamic compressions

Cao, Shunze / Lu, Yang / Ma, Nan / Tao, Yang / Zhang, Yuwu

Highlights • Dynamic compressive responses of recycled glass beads (GBs) reinforced foams. • 3D FE models of foams with explicitly modelling of hollow cells and recycled GBs. • Micromechanics of internal structure of reinforced foams is observed based on FE models. • Energy absorption efficiency of neat and GBs reinforced foams are analyzed.

Abstract Polymer foams and recycled glass beads (GBs) are both promising lightweight porous materials with excellent energy-absorption performance. The dynamic response of polyethylene foams reinforced by GBs have been rarely reported. In this study, the mechanical behaviors and dynamic stress enhancement mechanisms of GBs reinforced thermoplastic polyethylene foams are experimentally investigated, and verified by finite-element (FE) numerical predictions where the GBs are explicitly modeled based on the characteristics of microstructural constituent materials. It is reported that with increasing loading rates, strain and stress localizations are more pronounced around hollow cells, GBs and the bridge regions. Ascribed to the interaction between GBs and foam matrix, higher strain rate also contributes to enhancements of elastic properties and plastic stress of GBs reinforced foams with lower and higher reinforcement volume fractions (f), respectively. In comparison with the case of low loading rate, increasing loading rate gives rise to the damage initiation in GBs at lower compressive strain, and the damage initiation leads to the plastic stress softening of foam composites. The results also demonstrate that the f and volume fraction of polymer (F) have negative and positive influence, respectively, on the energy absorption efficiency of GBs reinforced foams.