Impact Analysis for Cellular Polymeric Materials

The response of polymeric foams to impact loading can be pre-dicted from stress-strain data if their rate and strain dependent modulus can be factored into a function depending on strain alone and one depending on rate alone. With the help of a simple energy balance, equations can be derived relating impact velocity, decelera-tion and hysteresis to these two functions. For foams with nearly rate independent stress-strain properties these equations reduce to very simple expressions. The validity of the simple theoretical treatment is demonstrated with the help of experimental data ob-tained on two model foams