Constitutive modeling of polymeric foam material subjected to dynamic crash loading

This paper describes detail work on constitutive law modeling of low-density polymeric foam materials. Selected experimental results on low-density polyurethane (PU), polypropylene (PP), and polystyrene (PS) foams are presented. A rate-dependent hydrodynamic constitutive equation is presented for rigid polymeric foams. Focus has been placed on modeling of strain rate dependency and temperature effect on polymeric foams subjected to high rate impact loading. Numerical implementation procedure for the constitutive model is described. The constitutive model has been implemented into finite-element program as a user-defined material subroutine. Numerical examples are provided to validate the model under simple and complex loading conditions. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.