The Foam Design Challenge: Student-Driven Property Optimization of Flexible Polyurethane Foams by Guided Inquiry and Experimentation

An iterative engineering design approach to optimize polyurethane foams (PUFs) is described for a first-year undergraduate laboratory course. PUFs are lightweight, widely used, and industrially relevant materials with tailorable mechanical and thermal properties, making them ideal for teaching engineering design. Their multicomponent formulations (polyol, isocyanate, water, catalyst, surfactant) offer students a broad design space of possible formulations to explore for optimization of properties and performance. In this course, students gain hands-on experience synthesizing and characterizing PUFs while also applying data/statistical analysis, regression modeling, and process-property determination to key variables related to density and compressive stress. The described curriculum integrates foundational concepts, e.g., stress, strain, stoichiometry, chemical reactions, functionality, molecular weight, etc., thus linking experimental design to core principles in engineering, chemistry, and polymer science.