Experimental and numerical analysis of the Poisson’s ratio on soft polyurethane foams under tensile and cyclic compression load

Abstract

In this paper results on the evolution of Poisson’s ratio under tensile and cyclic compression on low-density soft open-cell polyurethane foams (85, 63, 46 kg/m³) up to 80% of strain are presented as obtained by full-field deformation measurements. The Poisson’s ratio was investigated using a Poisson’s function and a tangent Poisson’s function formulation, more capable to capture the instantaneous behavior of the foam and a possible auxetic behavior. The displacements’ maps and the stress-strain curves obtained experimentally by digital image correlation are compared with the numerical results of the FEM analysis obtained for ν = 0 and ν ≠ 0.

Keywords:

• Low density
• polyurethane foam
• digital image correlation
• Poisson’s ratio
• great deformation

Acknowledgments

We wish to acknowledge Blackshape S.p.A. and Eng. G. Verde for supporting and supplying the material.

Disclosure statement

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.