Fatigue of closed-cell foams in compression

This article deals with fatigue of closed-cell foams under compression loading. Testing is performed on three densities of Divinycell H-grade and three densities of Rohacell WF-grade foam under cyclic compression loading. The fatigue failure is in all cases described as localized crushing of cell layers. The two main observations from this are that the slopes of the stress—life curves are almost all different, both between the foam types and relative density. Secondly, the stress—life relation slopes are considerably flatter than corresponding data in tension. For one particular foam grade, the stress—life relation is almost flat.