The effect of strain rate and filler volume fraction on the mechanical properties of hollow glass microsphere modified polymer

Hollow Glass Microspheres (HGM) filled polymers are widely used in marine, aerospace and civil engineering. In this work, the mechanical properties of HGM filled polymers were investigated under low strain rate tests for compressive and tensile behaviors, and high strain rate tests for compressive behaviors. Systematic investigations are carried out to study the mechanical responses, energy absorption and failure modes of HGM filled polymers with different volume fractions of glass microspheres subject to different loading conditions. HGM filled polymers showed strong strain rate effect and the strain rate sensitivity factor increased with the increase of strain rate while decreased with the increase of filler volume fraction. HGM filled polymer absorbed more energy at Vf around 7.5% under low strain rate compression. Different fracture modes were discovered for HGM filled polymers under low and high strain rate loadings by using Computed Tomography (CT) scan and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The numerical results obtained from finite element analysis fitted well with the experimental data. In addition, a convenient generalized model was proposed to depict and predict the compressive strength of HGM filled polymers in the observed range of strain rates.