Fabrication of Aluminum Foams with Small Pore Size by Melt Foaming Method
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INTRODUCTION
CLOSED-CELL aluminum foams, in which pores exist separately, have many unique properties compared to traditional dense metallic materials due to the existence of pore structure: light-weight, considerable energy absorption and sound insulation performance, good electromagnetic shielding ability, low thermal conductivity, etc.[1–6] These excellent properties allow aluminum foams to be used in many application fields.[7–9] Among various manufacturing methods, melt foaming method is one of the most widely used one.[8] It has a simple procedure and is easy to fabricate large foam blocks, which makes it the most promising method for commercial production of aluminum foams.[10] Currently, typical pore size of aluminum foams made by melt foaming method is 3 to 6 mm.[11] Unfortunately, with such range of pore size, the performance of the foam products is not good enough. On the one hand, its secondary processing properties are poor.[12] On the other hand, its compressive strength and energy absorption still have the potential to be developed better.[10] Due to the existence of such problems, the development and applications of melt foaming method along with its products are limited. One promising way to solve these problems is to decrease the pore size. Recent research has shown that the decrease
YING CHENG, NINGZHEN WANG, TONG SHI, ZHIYONG LIU are with the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P.R. China. YANXIANG LI and XIANG CHEN are with the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, and the Key Laboratory for Advanced Materials Processing Technology, MOE, Beijing, P.R. China. Contact e-mail: [email protected] Manuscript submitted April 30, 2016. Article published online January 3, 2017. 754—VOLUME 48B, APRIL 2017
of the pore size can improve the performance of aluminum foams. Babcsan et al.[13,14] found that when the pore size is decreased to around 1 mm, the foams are stable enough to be re-melted and cast into complex shapes. They can also be roll-casted into thin plates and welded with aluminum plate. Yi et al.[15] and Xiaoqing et al.[16] compared the compressive performance of aluminum foams with different pore sizes and porosity and observed that compressive strength showed an increase when the pore size and porosity decreased to below 2 mm and 70 pct, respectively. It can be seen from references 13 to 16 that foams with small pore size (below 2 mm) and low porosity (60 to 70 pct) will have a higher foam stability, which means more uniform pore structure, less defects and more secondary forming possibility. In addition, its compressive strength and energy absorption capacity will be improved. All these improvements contribute to the further development and application of melt foaming method and its products. Therefore, reduction of pore size in aluminum foams is an important research area. So far, research on fabrication of aluminum foams with small pore size by melt foaming method is little.[17–20] In these studies, an essen
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