Assistive products for tissue integrity when lying down — Part 7: Foam properties, characteristics and performance

This document lists the terminology and common test methods used by manufacturers and laboratories to quantify the performance of a foam material. It also and gives information to users or buyers of these products to make an educated assessment of the relevance of the physical characteristics between various products offered to them.

This document summarizes/gives information about the tests for

— polyurethane foams – typically polyether (polyether polyurethane foam) or polyester based (polyester polyurethane foam) – produced by either slabstock (slabstock foam) or moulded foam process, and

— latex foams produced by either the Dunlop process or Talalay process.

The physical properties addressed in this document are

a) resilience,

b) hysteresis,

c) support/SAG factor,

d) density,

e) hardness,

f) compression set,

g) tensile strength,

h) tear strength,

i) air flow/permeability,

j) resistance to fatigue, and

k) microbial resistance.

NOTE The test methods presented in this document do not necessarily simulate conditions of use in practice. The use of resulting data is therefore restricted to a broad comparative assessment between different foam products.

This document a