Impact strength of high density solid-state microcellular polycarbonate foams

The effect of density (relative densities 0.33 to 0.90) on the impact behavior of microcellular polycarbonate (PC) was investigated. Cell size and foaming gas content were also considered. Flexed-beam Izod impact tests were conducted and the impact strength of these foams appears to be a strong function of both density and cell size. The impact strength was observed to improve over the unprocessed polycarbonate's impact strength for foams with relative densities of 60 percent and above. In terms of cell size, the impact strength increased with increasing cell size at a given density.