Abstract
Expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam is widely used in building and construction applications for thermal and acoustic insulation. This material is nearly transparent for X-rays, making it difficult to characterize its pore structure in 3D with X-ray tomography. Because of this difficulty, the pore network is often not investigated and is, thus, poorly known. Since this network controls different physical properties, such as the sound absorption, it is crucial to understand its overall structure. In this manuscript, we show how to reveal the pore network of EPS foams through the combination of high resolution X-ray tomography (micro-CT) and saturation techniques. The foams were saturated with CsCl-brine, which acts as a contrasting agent in X-ray micro-CT imaging. This allowed us to separate the beads, making up the foam, from the pore network. Based on the 3D micro-CT results, we were able to assess a representative elementary volume for the polystyrene, which allows for calculating the acoustical parameters from the Johnson–Champoux–Allard (JCA) model, the pore and bead size distribution. The 3D data was also used as input to simulate sound absorption curves. The parametric study showed that an increase in the bead size influenced the sound absorption of the material. We showed that, by doubling the diameter of beads, the absorption coefficient was doubled in certain ranges of frequency.
Highlights
Expanded polystyrene foam (EPS) is a widely used modern material in automobile, building, and other industries [1,2]
The samples were contained in a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) sleeve, which was itself glued into a core holder made of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) (Figure 1)
Values, helping the determination of the representative allows for the evaluation of the open porosity values, helping in the determination of the elementary volume (REV) and the volume fractions of each phase
Summary
Expanded polystyrene foam (EPS) is a widely used modern material in automobile, building, and other industries [1,2]. Compared with non-foamed polystyrene plastics, EPS has a lower density, a lower thermal conductivity, and a higher load bearing strength per weight [3]. The properties of polymer foams can be tuned by controlling the pore size, the relative density, the cell structure, and the use of additives [4,5,6]. EPS foam is a cellular material, used in various industrial sectors because of its remarkable properties. It is relatively stiff, easy to glue, lightweight, provides an excellent thermal insulation, and, especially, is much cheaper than other building materials.
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