Foams are omnipresent in our daily life, mass-produced for insulation, packaging, padding, bedding and other visible or hidden applications such as structural foams that pass unnoticed for philistine people and sometimes for specialists also.
Foams are versatile materials that can be flexible or rigid, with open or closed cells, reinforced or not, very light or near the density of dense polymers.
Apart the chemical type of the polymer, their properties depend on:
* The manufacturing process
* The density
* The cell morphology: open or closed, diameter, wall thickness…
All the polymers can be foamed but the most used types of polymers are:
* For the commodity polymers:
o Polyurethane
o Polystyrene
o PVC
o Polyethylene
o Polystyrene
o Polypropylene
o Natural rubber
o SBR
* For the engineering and specialty polymers:
o Polymethacrylimide
o Polyethersulfone
o Polyetherimide
o Silicones
o Composites...