Presentation: 2025 ND EPSCoR Annual conference 

October 21, 2025, NDSU Memorial Union, Fargo, North Dakota

Experimental and Computational Study of The Compressive Response of Polyurethane Foams at Varying Strain Rates

Polyurethane (PU) foams have found broad applications in automotive, aerospace, and packaging industries due to their lightweight structure plus superior energy absorption capability. PU foams mitigate mechanical impact via undergoing three characteristic regions of elastic deformation, plateau, and densification. This study was aimed to understand the compressive behavior of low-density PU foams at varying quasistatic compressive strain rates of 0.00308 s⁻¹, 0.00617 s⁻¹, and 0.0123 s⁻¹, respectively. Experimental results of the compression tests were obtained to evaluate the compressive deformations and energy absorption of the PU foams. Explicit dynamic finite-element (FE) software package (LS-DYNA® with the material model of MAT_063 Crushable Foam) was utilized to simulate the compression tests. The FE simulation results can reasonably match the experimental results and further expose detailed compressive deformation and stress responses of the PU foams. The present study established a robust experiment and FE-simulation based research procedure to explore the mechanical behavior of PU and other polymer foams in various stressing conditions and to design and optimize polymer-foam based lightweight energy-absorbing materials and structures for their reliable use in automotive, aerospace, packaging engineering.