Thermomechanical Behavior of a Polyurethane Shape Memory Polymer Foam

Abstract

Shape memory polymers (SMPs) have attracted great interest in recent years. The SMP foams are outstanding, owing to their high shape recovery ratio in compression. They can be used for, for instance, micro foldable vehicles, shape determination, and microtags. This article presents a study on the thermomechanical behavior of a polyurethane SMP foam, associated with these three applications. This includes four types of tests namely, compression test, free recovery test, constrained cooling test, and gripping test.