Investigation of the special characteristics of the propagation and reflection of pressure waves in a porous medium

Abstract

In view of the wide use of porous materials in technology there arises the need to investigate the dynamic processes taking place in them. The main difference between a porous substance and a solid condensed material is the fact that the condensed phase occupies only part of the volume of the porous medium, which leads to a lowered volumetric density and to a large degree of compressibility. There is particular interest in polymeric media with a small density on the order of 20 kg/m³, in which up to 98% of the volume is occupied by the gas phase. Such a density is achieved if the medium has a cellular structure of the foam, for example, in polyurethane foam plastics. At the present time, only the elastic properties of polyurethane foam plastics under the action of cyclic [1] and impact [2, 3] loads are known. Questions of the formation of pressure waves in such a medium, with the refraction in it of a shock wave from the gas, of the structure of the wave propagating over the foam plastic, as well as the special characteristics of its reflection from the interface, remain unclear. In the experiments described below, an investigation was made of pressure waves with intensities up to 20 bars in elastic polyurethane foams (PUF) with a porosity of 0.98 and the special characteristics of the reflection of such waves from a rigid wall were also determined.