Compressive response of self-healing polymer foams containing bilayered capsules: coupled healing agents diffusion and stress simulations

Abstract Numerical modelling on the compressive response of self-healing polymer foams embedded with novel, bilayered alginate capsules was developed based on the coupled pore fluid diffusion and stress simulations. Micromechanical models were developed to link the damage variable to permeability as well as the saturation to the capillary pressure within damaged polymer foams. These micromechanical models were calibrated against experimental measurements and were implemented into the coupled simulations. To give physical insight into how the damage evolution coupled with the mass conservation, an illustrative example was presented for one-dimensional (1D) compression problem. Two-dimensional (2D) detailed finite element simulations were conducted to interpret the experimental findings. It was demonstrated that the numerical study could capture the main features of the self-healing process. The predicted healing efficiency has good agreement with that measured by the experiments. Based on the numerical models, parameter study was conducted to understand the effects of the key design parameters of the healing system.