Voids/foams

A mixture of PhenoHc MicrobaUoons and resin binder has a putty-like consistency. It can be molded to shape, troweUed onto surfaces, or pressed into a core. Curing gives a high strength, low density (0.144 g/cm ) foam free of voids and dense areas, and without a brittle skin. Syntactic foams are used in widely diverse appHcations, including boat flotation aids stmctural parts in aircraft, submarines, and missiles stmctural cores for waU panels and ablative heat shields for reentry vehicles and rocket test engines. 

Air-Entrainment Agents. Materials that are used to improve the abiUty of concrete to resist damage from freezing are generally known as air-entrainment agents. These surfactant admixtures (see Surfactants) produce a foam which persists in the mixed concrete, and serves to entrain many small spherical air voids that measure from 10 to 250 p.m in diameter. The air voids alleviate internal stresses in the concrete that may occur when the pore solution freezes. In practice, up to 10% air by volume may be entrained in concrete placed in severe environments. 

Generation Spontaneous generation of gas bubbles within a homogeneous liquid is theoreticaUy impossible (Bikerman, Foams Theoiy and Industrial Applications, Reinhold, New York, 1953, p. 10). The appearance of a bubble requires a gas nucleus as avoid in the liquid. The nucleus may be in the form of a small bubble or of a solid carrying adsorbed gas, examples of the latter being dust particles, boiling chips, and a solid wall. A void can result from cavitation, mechan-ic ly or acoustically induced. Blander and Katz [AlChE J., 21, 833 (1975)] have thoroughly reviewed bubble nucleation in liquids. 

Syntactic foam contains an orderly arrangement of hollow sphere fillers. They are usually glass microspheres approximately 100 microns (4 mils) in diameter, provide strong, impervious supports for otherwise weak, irregular voids. As a result, syntactic foam has attracted considerable attention both as a convenient and relatively lightweight buoyancy material and as a porous solid with excellent shock attenuating characteristics. The latter characteristic is achieved... 

The density of the polymer clearly shows the formation of a foamed polymer. The density values for selected foams together with the polyimide homopolymers are shown in Table 11. The density values for the ODPA/FDA and PM-DA/FDA polyimides were both 1.28 g/cm and 3FDA/PMDA is 1.34, while most of the propylene oxide-based copolymers showed substantially lower values. The densities of the foamed copolymers derived from these copolymers ranged from 1.09 to 1.27 g/cm, which is 85-99 % of that of the polyimide homopolymers. This is consistent with 1-15 % of the film being occupied by voids. From these data (i.e., the comparison of Tables 10 and 11), it appears that the volume fraction of voids or the porosity is substantially less than the volume fraction of propylene oxide in the copolymer (i.e., 70 % or less). Thus the efficiency of foam formation is poor. Conversely, the propylene oxide-based copolymers with PMDA/ODA as the imide component did not show the expected density drop, and the values were essentially identical to that of the homopolymer. In PM-DA/ODA-based systems, molecular ordering and orientation were found to be critical in determining the stability of the foam structure. Where the character-... 

Foam formation was possible only in the amorphous high Tg polyimides however, the volume fraction of voids does not correspond to the volume fraction of propylene oxide in the initial copolymer. A decrease in the volume fraction of voids incorporated into the matrix in comparison to the initial volume fraction of the propylene oxide in the copolymer can be understood by consid-... 

The pentagonal dodecahedron, however, is not entirely space-filling, i.e. a close-packed array of such figures has a number of interstitial voids. On the other hand, Kelvin s tetrakaidecahedron and the P-tetrakaidecahedron are. The latter requires 4% more surface area, so a system of such figures would spontaneously rearrange to the more stable array of Kelvin cells. Thus, it would seem that Kelvin s tetrakaidecahedron is the ideal candidate nevertheless, this is not observed in real systems Pentagonal faces are shown on foam cells. These... 

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