Experimental study on cushioning behaviors of foam with different skin-liked covers

Periodic structures were used in foams to improve their cushioning ability in previous studieswhich are usually constructed by additive manufacturing methods with high cost. To improve cushioning property of the foam materials at a low cost, foams with skin covers are proposed in this paper to provide a new idea for a structural design that is inspired by the composition of animal skins. The foam without covers and covered with three different skin types, including square shape, circle shape, and Pearlfish skin, are investigated in this study. The stiffness and acceleration responses of these structures are measured by static loading and dropping test respectively, which are used to evaluate their static and dynamic cushion properties. Based on the tested results, it demonstrated that the cover skins could improve the stiffness of the foam materials and decrease acceleration response of mass fixing on them in dropping test at 0.4 m and 0.5 m. The enhancement for cushion ability of the proposed structure in this paper is proved experimentally.