Analysis of the Mechanical Response of Rigid Thermoplastic Foams

Abstract

Rigid thermoplastic foams, also known as structural foams, have been produced since decades to enhance specific properties, reduce material consumption and avoid shrinkage of thermoplastic injection molded parts. A good understanding of their behaviour is needed to properly design and predict their performance for a given set of functional requirements. While the variation of mechanical properties in dependence of the density reduction has been the traditional approach to characterise the mechanical performance of this type of materials, little attention has been paid to the variation of properties depending on the foam morphology.

As the second part of a research where the effects of the injection molding parameters on the foam morphology are analyzed, mechanical tests were conducted to study the variation of the properties along an injection molded plate. The correlations between the foam morphology and the tensile and flexural modulus of elasticity are studied.