Impact properties are a crucial issue for protective materials. Researchers design various kinds of structures to absorb more impact energy in the protective systems. Foam is one of the good choices for protective structures due to its excellent energy absorbing capabilities. For this reason, different kinds of foams are adapted to protective systems to design an efficient anti-impact structure. Among the foams, polyurethane foams are important for designing protective systems. In this work, polyurethane foams are investigated in terms of protective properties. In order to enhance the protective behavior of polyurethane foams, a smart material is integrated into polyurethane foams. The investigated smart material is a kind of non-Newtonian material that shows fluidic properties at rest state while its behavior turns to elastic material under loading. To understand the efficiency of this material, a polyurethane foam is impregnated with this smart material. In the impact tests, a neat foam and a smart material integrated foam are subjected to a free falling mass impacts. Deceleration behavior of impacting object is analyzed in the results. According to this work, smart material considerably enhances the deceleration capability of polyurethane foam. From the results, deceleration peak is at about 48 g for the neat foam whereas it is at about 12 g in the smart material integrated foam.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Impact, smart materials, foam
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