Compressive Properties of Ceramic Microballoon Syntactic Foams

In this paper, fabrications of vinyl ester syntactic foams with different contents of ceramic microballoons or microspheres were prepared using the open mould method for compression specimens. The effects of the ceramic microballoons on the mechanical properties, particularly compressive properties were investigated. The results show that the syntactic foams with vinyl ester matrix possess strength behaviour varied with different contents of ceramic microballoons. Ceramic microballoons have an important effect on the stress-strain, mean plateau stress and strain energy absorption capacities of syntactic foams. The results also show that the content of ceramic microballoons in vinyl ester syntactic foams should be controlled in order to obtain a good combination of compressive strength and energy absorption capacities. The reasons are discussed here in details.