Mechanical characterization of orthotropic elastic parameters of a foam by the mixed experimental-numerical analysis

Different kind of foams, usually made from polymers, metals, ceramics, glass, etc. have been widely used in various branches of civil engineering since the 80s. The most common are polyurethane foams. Since their role in construction nowadays is not only to act as a thermal barrier but also to take some of loads, the engineers need to know also their mechanical properties. This implies that manufacturers or designers must perform a number of laboratory tests in order to find a set of substantial parameters of this particular material. Due to noticeable orthotropic behavior of foams, one needs to carry out several laboratory tests to identify elastic properties only. Here, an enhanced testing methodology is proposed to reduce the number of tests required for characterization of elastic orthotropic properties of foams. By combining the advanced measurement techniques, non-traditional experimental setup, numerical modeling and inverse analysis one can capture all nine elastic properties from just two or three tests. In the paper, full experimental and numerical procedures are presented and validated by noisy pseudo-experimental data.