CONFOR® Foams
CONFOR® foams offer a unique combination of properties that are ideal for high energy-absorption applications, enabling them to absorb and dissipate shock and impact. CONFOR Foams are also used in comfort management and protective padding applications.
CONFOR® foams offer a unique combination of seemingly conflicting properties that are ideal for comfort management and protective padding applications. These urethane foams soften and conform when exposed to warmth, giving gentle, virtually pressure-free support. When the foams take a direct blow, however, their high energy-absorption characteristics enable them to absorb up to 97 percent of an impact. While they are slow to recover after deflection, they effectively resist compression set.
It is the damping properties, engineered into CONFOR formulations that give the materials their uncompromising comfort and protection capabilities. Damping makes the foams rate-sensitive (displaying different properties under different rates of strain). Whilst CONFOR foams slowly deflect under sustained pressure, damping causes them to behave like stiffer foams when they receive an impact. The foams’ ability to dissipate energy prevents them from bottoming out, or collapsing completely, and virtually no energy is returned to the impacting body.
CONFOR foams also enable designers to achieve comfort goals with less cushioning material, reducing the design profile and perhaps project costs. For impact-resistance, CONFOR foam composites often present a less costly solution when compared to structural or mechanical alternatives.
With strategic use of CONFOR foams, design engineers can optimize considerable benefits. In seating, for example, extra softness can be achieved by combining a relatively thin layer of CONFOR foam with another standard material. Or, instead of contouring the seat back for extra lumbar spine support, appropriately placed pieces of CONFOR foam often provide the optimal combination of performance and value.
When small electronic devices, densely packed with components, are bumped or dropped, circuit boards can collide, antennas and speakers can crash into the shell, and fragile display screens can flex and crack. Even as very thin pads, CONFOR foams protect components by virtually eliminating the destructive shock energy, absorbing it internally and not returning any of the force to the impacting component. A special electronic-grade formulation—CONFOR®CF-45E foam—exhibits no silicone off-gassing and can help prevent damage to disk drives and other delicate parts during assembly and clean-room operations.