Damage mechanisms in elastomeric foam composites: Multiscale X-ray computed tomography and finite element analyses

Publication date: Available online 16 November 2018Source: Composites Science and TechnologyAuthor(s): Brendan P. Croom, Helena Jin, Bernice Mills, Jay Carroll, Kevin Long, Judith Brown, Xiaodong LiAbstractTo understand the mechanisms of damage initiation and propagation in glass microballoon (GMB)/silicone elastomer matrix syntactic foam composites, multiscale X-ray computed tomography images obtained during in situ compression were analyzed using quantitative image processing and digital volume correlation (DVC) techniques. High-resolution tomograms revealed that both the initiation and propagation of GMB collapse depended on the local clustering of GMBs, leading to the formation of pseudo-crush bands in the composite. This resulted in prominent bands of axial strain variation that grew to several millimeters in length as revealed by DVC. A new mechanism based on stress redistribution around collapsed GMBs is proposed to explain the damage propagation, which is supported by finite element analysis and successfully captures the effects of cluster orientation on the observed damage.

Source: Composites Science and Technology - November 16, 2018 Category: Science Source Type: research