Experimentation and simulation of moisture diffusion in foam-cored polyurethane sandwich structure

The moisture diffusion behavior of two-part thermoset polyurethane neat resin, woven E-glass fiber-reinforced polyurethane face sheet, closed-cell rigid polyurethane foam core and their corresponding sandwich specimens was investigated in this study. The vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding process was used to manufacture the polyurethane sandwich panels. Open-edge moisture diffusion experiment was conducted for sandwich panel and its constituents by immersing each type of samples in distilled water at room temperature for nearly seven months. Moisture diffusivities and solubility for neat resin, face sheet and foam core specimens were characterized according to the experimental analysis. The moisture diffusion behavior for closed-cell polyurethane foam was found to deviate significantly from classical Fick’s law, and a multi-stage diffusion model was thus proposed to explain this deviation using a time-dependent diffusivity scheme. A user-defined subroutine was developed to implement this scheme into the commercial finite element analysis code ABAQUS. A three-dimensional dynamic finite element model was developed to predict the moisture diffusion behavior in neat resin, face sheet, foam core and sandwich specimens. This finite element model was then validated by comparing simulation results with experimental findings.