Fracture Behavior Of Polyurethane Foams

Due to their high energy absorption capabilities, polyurethane (PU) foams have been widely used in many applications. The mechanical behavior of Polyurethane (PU) foams has been attracting the attention from engineers and researchers. But most of work was to study the compressive behavior of PU foams. Very little knowledge is available about the fracture behavior of the PU foams. In this paper, single edge notch bend (SENB) and single edge notch tension (SENT) tests are conducted to study the mode-I fracture behavior of a rigid closed cell PU foam, PMDI 20, with a nominal density of 20 pcf (320 kg/m(3)). The stress intensity factor K-IC is calculated from the loading curves. The displacement and strain field around the crack tip is obtained using digital image correlation (DIC) technique.