A REVIEW OF STUDIES ON THE MECHANICAL BEHAVIOR OF SYNTACTIC FOAMED PLASTICS

Syntactic foam as an important protecting material has beenused to the military and civil industries. Therefore, theinvestigation into mechanical behavior of these new materials isimportant boththeoretically and practically. Inorder to promote the exploitation and use of syntactic foam plastics in ourcountry and the study on the mechanical behavior ofthis new kind of foam plastics, a review of studies on the mechanicalproperties of syntactic foamed plastics is given in this paper.First, the early studies on mechanical properties of syntactic foam plastics areintroduced. Second,the recent developments of mechanical properties of syntactic foamedplastics, including some author's work in this field, are reviewed, thatis some static and dynamic compression tests as wellas microscopic loading tests for polyurethane syntactic foams. Thedeformation characteristics and failure mechanism of thesematerials are discussed. In theoretical aspects, thecharacteristics of energy absorption as well as the cushioning behavior ofsyntactic foams are also discussed and from the macroscopic and microscopicviews of mechanics, the theoretical prediction of mechanical properties isimportant. Moreover, based on the method of finite element analysis and thegeneral software, the failure behavior of high density syntactic foams is investigated. Finally, some future development trends are presented.