Analytical study of structural thermal insulating syntactic foams

Syntactic foams composed of a resin matrix and hollow glass spheres represent one viable solution for structures requiring both enhanced structural and thermal insulation properties. Designing syntactic foams with both high strength and thermal insulating properties is difficult since these two properties are inherently in opposition to one another. As a result, it is critical to systematically select matrix and particle materials and volume fractions of each, which will result in acceptable strength and thermal properties. The focus of this research is to investigate the effects of sphere particle packing and size distribution on effective thermal conductivity, strength, and stiffness of syntactic foams. The analysis is performed through finite element thermal and stress analysis of various sphere packing and size distributions under several particle-to-matrix conductivity and stiffness ratios. The results show the effective thermal conductivity predictions to be relatively independent of packing and size distribution while predicted strength and stiffness properties show a greater dependence on packing and size distribution, particularly for high particle-to-matrix stiffness ratios.