Material Properties

Material properties are accessible from the Materials Database and My Materials tabs in the Materials dialog.

Materials Database Tab

The Materials Database tab lists the materials included with Inspire PolyFoam. The tab also provides access to properties that you can review and modify for each material. You can save any modified materials as new materials and access them and their properties through My Materials tab.


Select a material from the list. The primary properties for the selected material are organized through the Thermal, Rheological, Mechanical, PVT and Curing Kinetics tabs.


Thermal Tab

The Thermal tab includes the following material properties:

Property Description
Specific Heat Specific Heat = energy per unit of mass per degree of temperature change.
Conductivity In this case, we are measuring thermal conductivity, where Conductivity = Watts per unit of distance per degree of temperature change.
Density Density = units of mass per units of volume

Rheological Tab

The Rheological tab includes a second row of tabs to define Constitutive Model, Temperature Dependence, and Miscellaneous properties for the materials.

The Constitutive Model subtab includes a dropdown menu listing the following consitutive models:
  • Carreau-Yasuda
  • Cross Model
  • Herschel-Bulkley
  • Modified Cross Model
  • None
  • Power Law

Each constitutive model includes fields for its required inputs.

The Temperature Dependence subtab include a dropdown menu listing the following models:
  • Exp(-Beta(T-Tref))
  • Exp(Q/RT))
  • WLF

Each model includes fields for its required inputs.

The Reference subtab includes fields for:
  • Reference Temperature
  • No-Flow Temperature
  • Minimum Strain Rate Limit
  • Maximum Strain Rte Limit
  • Ejection Temperature

Mechanical Tab

The Mechanical tab includes the following mechanical properties.

Property Description
Young's Modulus Young's modulus of a material is a measure of the resistance of the material to deformation when subjected to stress. It is a measure of stiffness of the material.
Poisson Ratio Poisson's ratio is the ratio of lateral and longitudinal strain when subjected to uniaxial stress.
Yield Stress Specifies the stress point at which the material deformation changes from elastic to plastic.
Coefficient of Thermal Expansion The thermal expansion coefficient describes the extent of changes in the size of the object due to variation in temperature.

PVT Tab

The PVT tap included a dropdown menu with the following options:
  • None