Fabrication And Mechanical Property Investgaion Of Shape Memory Epoxy Polymer Foam

Shape memory polymer foam(SMPF) has some characteristics such as low density, high compression rate and shape memory effect, which makes SMPF great prospect in biomedicine and aerospace.In this study, we use shape memory epoxy polymer as matrix, and flexible polyurethane foam as foaming materials prepared a kind of shape memory epoxy syntactic foam, and characterize the syntactic foam by DMA, TGA, FTIR, XPS. We found that between SMEP and flexible polyurethane foam it just occurred crosslinking and curing reaction during the fabrication of shape memory epoxy syntactic foam. The flexible polyurethane foam adjusts the glass transition temperature of the syntactic foam, Tg and the storage modulus increased with the decrease proportion of flexible polyurethane foam. Compared with SMEP and flexible polyurethane foam, the syntactic foam has lower initial decomposition temperature and higher decomposition termination temperature and the syntactic foam can be used below 200℃.Find the relationship between the syntactic foam’s structure/mechanical property and the preparation parameters(K/T/foaming mould) by SEM and mechanical compression testing: The prepared syntactic foam is open cell foam, and the distribution of the foam pores is relatively uniform, every preparation parameter will influence the cell size, but only T can affect the pores’ anisotropy and uniformity. The elastic modulus of the syntactic foam ranges from several to several hundred KPa, which means its bearing strength is very high when using. The preparation parameters influence on the elastic modulus, which can be summarized as the influence of the cell distribution and cell size on the elastic modulus of the syntactic foam: larger diameter lead to smaller the elastic modulus of the syntactic foam. At high temperature, the syntactic foam has a glass transition, and the elastic modulus is decreased obviously.By adjusting the preparation conditions(K/T/foaming mould) shape memory epoxy syntactic foam with high compression ratio and good shape memory property were obtained. Driving the syntactic foam shape recovery with heat or electricity can be completed in about 3min and obtains good recovery performance.