A Self-Healing Smart Syntactic Foam

提案标题自我愈合智能句法泡沫自我愈合的伤口在生物系统涉及多步愈合的解决方案。例如，人类皮肤的愈合依赖于快速形成的血小板在最终修复组织缓慢再生之前密封伤口。该项目旨在了解一种新的两步愈合过程，通过形状记忆聚合物（SMP）为基础的复合泡沫塑料的影响缓解。两步（密封然后愈合）方案将以这样的方式起作用，即热固性SMP基质将首先通过受限的形状恢复（步骤1）闭合或显著地变窄裂纹开口，然后均匀分散在SMP基质中的热塑性颗粒将通过热塑性/SMP分子的物理缠结熔融、扩散和胶合裂纹的两侧（步骤2）。通过理论建模和实验测试，研究了各种设计参数（如泡沫的编程或训练）对冲击响应和自修复效率的影响。复合泡沫是分散在聚合物基体中的中空微球，已广泛应用于许多轻型工程结构，如飞机、船舶、汽车、火车、坦克、海上石油平台、桥面、该项目将提供具有自我修复能力的复合泡沫塑料，使这些结构能够自主，重复，有效地修复其内部损伤，并在分子长度范围内。该项目还将通过让研究生和本科生，包括少数民族学生直接参与这项研究，为研究生和本科生教育作出贡献。它还将通过项目网站和学术出版物向高中生和公众传播。

Proposal Title A Self-Healing Smart Syntactic Foam Self-healing of wounds in biological systems involves multiple-step healing solutions. For example, the healing of human skin relies on fast forming blood platelet to seal the wound before the slow regeneration of the final repair tissues. This project aims to understand a novel two-step healing process via a shape memory polymer (SMP) based syntactic foam for impact mitigation. The two-step (seal then heal) scheme will work in such a way that the thermoset SMP matrix will first close or significantly narrow the crack opening by confined shape recovery (Step 1) and then the thermoplastic particles, which are uniformly dispersed in the SMP matrix, will melt, diffuse, and glue the two sides of the crack by physical entanglement of thermoplastic/SMP molecules (Step 2). The effect of various design parameters such as programming or training of the foam on impact response and self-healing efficiency will be investigated through theoretical modeling and experimental testing.Syntactic foam, hollow microspheres dispersed in a polymer matrix, has been widely used in many lightweight engineering structures such as aircraft, ship, auto, train, tank, offshore oil platform, bridge deck, etc. This project will provide syntactic foams with self-healing capabilities so that these structures can repair their internal damage autonomously, repeatedly, efficiently, and at molecular-length scale. This project will also contribute to graduate and undergraduate education by directly involving them, including minority students, in this research. It will also be disseminated to high school students and general public through a project website and scholarly publications.