LAUSR

Abstract Syntactic foams are widely used in damage tolerance and low-density applications. In present work compressive behavior of 3D printed three-phase syntactic foams under quasi-static strain rates (0.001, 0.01 and 0.1 s−1) are investigated. Extruded filaments of High density polyethylene (HDPE) with environmentally pollutant fly ash cenospheres (0, 20, 40 and 60 vol%) are used for 3D printing. Micrography reveal that syntactic foam filament and 3D printed samples are three phase systems comprising matrix, cenosphere and porosity. Matrix porosity of about 7% makes these foams lightweight and suitable for buoyant applications. The compressive properties are extracted from the stress-strain plots. It is observed that modulus and specific modulus increases with strain rate and cenosphere content. Specific compressive strength increases with strain rate and decrease with cenosphere content.