The Attenuation of Shock Waves in PU Foam and its Application

Abstract

In the explosive field, it is imperative that there be a safe method for shipping small quantities of explosives. These explosives may be uncharacterized materials sent for laboratory evaluation or standard explosives for test comparisons. For this purpose, Hildner and Urizar (1981) have'designed a shipping container for small samples of high explosives. They used vermiculite as a filler to absorb explosive energy. PU (polyurethane) foams are widely used as impact energy absorbers for long time. The attenuation of shock wave in condensed media and porous solids has been studied enormously (Meyers et al., 1983). In contrast, the dissipation of detonation energy in plastic foams has not attracted much attention yet. In the propagation of shock wave in porous materials, the dissipation of detonation energy may be influenced by the matrix strength and porosity (Dun in et al., 1979). In the present paper, the attenuation capability of different polymers are assessed. From the preliminary results we found the PU is a suitable material to reduce the shock energy. In order to investigate the porosity or density effect on the shock pressure attenuation, we have prepared PU foams with different densities to test their effectiveness. And it shows that the PU foam with density of 0.15 g/cm3 is a satisfactory material for the explosion-proof purpose.