Strain rate effects in crushable structural foams

Structural foams are used as cores in sandwich construction. In the application of foreign object impact loading of sandwich structures, the core will suffer dynamic multi axial deformation and crush. This means that experimental study is required for the crush behaviour of structural foams at various strain rates, and numerical simulation foam models need to be calibrated with dynamic data. A number of foams are considered, namely Divinycell PVC foam, Rohacell PMI foam and Alporas aluminium foam. Also, new generation metallic micro lattice structures are discussed.