ANALYSIS OF THE STRUCTURE - PROPERTY RELATIONS OF FOAM MATERIALS

This article describes investigations of the relations between mechani cal properties (stiffness and strength) and structure of the cells of foam materials. A new analytical approach based on shell theory was us ed to study closed cell foams and the finite element method was used t o study open cell and closed cell foams. Results were compared with ex perimentally obtained data for copper and polymethacrylimide foams and with results of prior analytical methods. Experimental results lie wi thin the region bounded by the predicted behaviour of fully closed cel l and fully open cell foams.