The dependency of compressive response of epoxy syntactic foam on the strain rate and temperature under rigid confinement

Syntactic foam is being increasingly conceived for aero engine applications to enhance overall structural reliability under impact loading. Systematic compressive tests without and with lateral confinement are carried out to investigate the deformation and failure of an epoxy syntactic foam (ESF) at quasi-static 0.01/s, medium rate 10–100/s and high strain rates 500–1100/s at gradually increasing temperatures from room temperature 25 °C to 150 °C. The stress–strain response and the corresponding deformation process, complemented by Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique, were monitored to reveal the dynamic deformation and strain localization of the foam. The elastic-brittle behavior without confinement at high strain rates can be suppressed by the lateral confinement and by elevated temperatures above 100 °C. The lateral confinement slightly increases yield stress and significantly improves the energy absorption of ESF. Both confined yield stress and energy absorption evolve nonlinearly with strain rate and temperature. The strain hardening in the elastic–plastic behavior of ESF under confinement is strain rate independent, compared to its modest temperature dependency. A nonlinear phenomenological model is found to be able to describe the unconfined and confined responses of ESF and its temperature-strain rate equivalence, and reveal the competition between strain hardening and strain softening which is influenced by temperature.