Modeling the Mechanical and Aging Properties of Silicone Rubber and Foam - Stockpile-historical & Additively Manufactured Materials

Modeling the Mechanical and Aging Properties of Silicone Rubber and Foam - Stockpile-historical & Additively Manufactured Materials
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 19
Release: 2014
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M97* and M9763 belong to the M97xx series of cellular silicone materials that have been deployed as stress cushions in some of the LLNL systems. Their purpose of these support foams is to distribute the stress between adjacent components, maintain relative positioning of various components, and mitigate the effects of component size variation due to manufacturing and temperature changes. In service these materials are subjected to a continuous compressive strain over long periods of time. In order to ensure their effectiveness, it is important to understand how their mechanical properties change over time. The properties we are primarily concerned about are: compression set, load retention, and stress-strain response (modulus).

Thermal Aging of Traditional and Additively Manufactured Foams

Thermal Aging of Traditional and Additively Manufactured Foams
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 20
Release: 2016
Genre:
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Cellular solids or foams are a very important class of materials with diverse applications ranging from thermal insulation and shock absorbing support cushions, to light-weight structural and floatation components, and constitute crucial components in a large number of industries including automotive, aerospace, electronics, marine, biomedical, packaging, and defense. In many of these applications the foam material is subjected to long periods of continuous stress, which can, over time, lead to a permanent change in structure and a degradation in performance. In this report we summarize our modeling efforts to date on polysiloxane foam materials that form an important component in our systems. Aging of the materials was characterized by two measured quantities, i.e., compression set and load retention. Results of accelerated aging experiments were analyzed by an automated time-temperaturesuperposition (TTS) approach, which creates a master curve that can be used for long-term predictions (over decades) under ambient conditions. When comparing such master curves for traditional (stochastic) foams with those for recently 3D-printed (i.e., additively manufactured, or AM) foams, it became clear that AM foams have superior aging behavior. To gain deeper understanding, we imaged the microstructure of both foams using X-ray computed tomography, and performed finite-element analysis of the mechanical response within these microstructures. This indicates a wider stress variation in the stochastic foam with points of more extreme local stress as compared to the 3D printed material.

Degradation of Elastomers in Practice, Experiments and Modeling

Degradation of Elastomers in Practice, Experiments and Modeling
Author: Gert Heinrich
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2022-10-14
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 303115164X

This volume describes new insights into the main aspects of rubber degradation by material’s fatigue, wear and aging evolution, as well as their impact on mechanical rubber properties. It provides a thorough state-of-art explanation of the essential chemical, physical and mechanical principles as well as practices of material characterization for wear prediction, and to convey or define novel strategies and procedures of planning effective wear test programs. The initiating factors of abrasion, the development of surface abrasion on sharp and blunt tracks (so called cutting and chipping) and the influence of smear and lubricants is also summarized. The volume is of interest to research scientists in related fields from academia and industry.

Weapon Foam Accelerated Aging Using Dynamic Mechanical Analysis

Weapon Foam Accelerated Aging Using Dynamic Mechanical Analysis
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Total Pages: 3
Release: 1996
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Rigid polyurethane foams are used for supports and as encapsulants for electronic assemblies in almost all weapon systems. Mechanical properties (storage, loss, rubbery, and glassy moduli) of three foams are being evaluated; the test scheme is illustrated. Aging tests are also being run on the long-term performance of foams being used in the Russian Fissile Material Container; there was no significant change in the glass transition temperature, glassy modulus, or rubbery modulus after one year of aging.

Effective Elastic Properties of Foams

Effective Elastic Properties of Foams
Author: Wenqi Zhu
Publisher:
Total Pages: 131
Release: 2018
Genre:
ISBN:

Thanks to the excellent combination of physical, mechanical and thermal properties, foam materials bring new possibilities to extend the range of the properties for engineering, which is limited by fully dense solids. In this study, a micromechanical modeling based on Hill's lemma (Hill's lemma periodic computational homogenization approach) is proposed for predicting the effective elastic properties of foam materials. An approach based on Voronoi diagram is used to generate realistic periodic foam structures, including regular and irregular open-cell structures, and irregular closed-cell structures. First, the influences of morphological parameters of open-cell foams on the effective elastic properties are studied. The generated structures allow representing the details of the microstructure and cover a large range of foam materials for engineering purposes. With the assessments, new generic analytical laws are proposed for Kelvin open-cell foams by considering their morphological parameters. Second, the tomography images are analysed to obtain the morphological description of the real irregular open-cell structure. With these morphological parameters, numerous numerical realistic structures are generated. Specific statistic methods are proposed to determine the Representative Volume Element (RVE) for foam models. Third, the anisotropic irregular closed-cell foam is studied. The numerical structures are generated with the morphological description of the reconstructed tomography structure and the effective elastic properties of the closed-cell foam models are estimated. The numerical results show the satisfying agreement with the experimental results.