Abstract
Abstract
Weight reduction is becoming increasingly important in the automotive industry. To achieve this goal, special materials are needed. We are no longer just using solid materials in production, but also metal foams. Metal foams, in particular aluminium foam, have high strength but their mass is a fraction of that of solid metals. Aluminium foams are usually not used on their own, but as a reinforcement for some structural element. The joining of these materials needs to be improved, as low weight is also important here. Therefore, bonding is a technology often used. For metal foams, use a little adhesive to avoid filling the pores. So we are only bonding on a very small surface area, so it is very important to increase adhesion. We used laser beam surface treatment to increase adhesion. The interfacial properties of the laser beam surface treated aluminium foam were first investigated by distilled water wetting and then, after setting the optimum parameters, the wetting of the adhesive was also investigated.