Influence of axial compressive loads on buckling and free vibration response of surface-modified fly ash cenosphere/epoxy syntactic foams

This work deals with experimental buckling and free vibration behavior of silane-treated cenosphere/epoxy syntactic foams subjected to axial compression. Critical buckling loads are computed from compressive load–deflection plots deduced using universal testing machine. Further, compressive loads are applied in the fixed intervals until critical loading point on different set of samples having similar filler loadings to estimate natural frequency associated with the first three transverse bending modes. Increasing filler content increases critical buckling load and natural frequency of syntactic foam composites. Increasing axial compressive load reduce structural stiffness of all the samples under investigation. Syntactic foams registered higher stiffness compared to neat epoxy for all the test loads. Similar observations are noted in case of untreated cenosphere/epoxy foam composites. Silane-modified cenosphere embedded in epoxy matrix registered superior performance (rise in critical buckling load and natural frequencies to the tune of 23.75% and 11.46%, respectively) as compared to untreated ones. Experimental results are compared with the analytical solutions that are derived based on Euler–Bernoulli hypothesis and results are found to be in good agreement. Finally, property map of buckling load as a function of density is presented by extracting values from the available literature.