Application of Mechanical Tests to Determine the Properties of Foam Rubber for Mill Design

Rubber foam or polyurethane foam has different use; one of them is in the upholstery. The importance of the use of this material is in the fact that it can be used both in padding plates and shrinkage as filler. Foam rubber has a nonlinear behavior as in the case of steel, and to determine its mechanical behavior by mathematical formulas is not possible. Due to the above, the manufacture of specialized machinery for grinding the product is done by trial and error. This causes manufacturing costs for small upholstery companies to rise, and it is impossible to purchase this equipment for their workshop. In this work, tension and flexion tests are presented to several foam rubber specimens with different densities that allowed to determine the mechanical behavior of the material. These tests allowed to determine the maximum load to tension and flexion as well as the elongations produced by the tests, which will facilitate the design of the machinery at low cost, achieving with this that the small upholstery companies can acquire this type of equipment, providing elements to compete in their manufacturing area.