ABSTRACT
Open-cell foams have several applications in engineering, e.g. for wrapping and damping. Specifically polyurethane foams are often used for absorbing sound and vibrational forces. The effective material properties of polyurethane foams, however, are generally not known and depend strongly on the specific micro structure. Computational foam models capture usually the static but not the dynamic foam behavior correctly. In order to develop a model which is able to work for both, simulations in statics and in dynamics, we use here three dimensional micro-computed tomography scans to deduce the relevant features. Suitable methods taken from stochastic geometry and image analysis are then employed to model the material’s structural characteristics.
In this contribution simplified models preserving the original topology are presented. For comparison with real polyurethane foam we performed experimental investigations on the elastic parameters and on the eigen frequencies. These experiments are compared with finite element analyses of representative foam volume elements to determine the open-cell foam’s dynamic properties.
