Preliminary Mechanical Characterization of Reinforced Rigid Polyurethane Foams

Rigid polyurethane foams are very widely used in a variety of structural and non-structural applications. For example, it may be used as an insulator, in sandwich layered composite panels, and as filler for improving the stiffness of lightweight components, such as thin metal tubes. Rigid foams do not show any recovery after impact and typically are crushed or crumble. They also tend to degrade over a period of time. Thus in this investigation, reinforced rigid polyurethane foams have been developed and characterized for their quasi-static mechanical properties. Rigid polyurethane foam was reinforced with short, 0.47 mm length, milled E-glass fibers. It has been observed that short glass fiber reinforcement helps in improving the mechanical properties, such as tensile modulus, breaking strength, and compression modulus, of the reinforced foam as compared to monolithic foam.