Short communication: test equipmentA new biaxial compression fixture for polymeric foams

This article presents a new biaxial compression test fixture designed for polymeric foam materials. The main advantage of the new fixture is that it is designed for uniaxial testing machines, therefore the biaxial compression measurement does not require a multiaxial test system. The geometries of the fixture and the test specimen, respectively, ensure equibiaxial loading conditions. In order to demonstrate the performance of this new device, equibiaxial measurements of a polymeric foam material are presented. The particular material under consideration is a closed-cell polyethylene foam. In addition, the relation between uniaxial compression tests and equibiaxial compression tests are presented.