The Ordered Porous Aluminum: Modeling, Preparation, and Properties with Designed Structures

Abstract

Porous structure is the most important feature for porous metals, which influences the properties of porous metals. The size, shape and distribution of traditional porous metals are usually random and irregular. Therefore, it is difficult to establish the relationship between structures and properties in porous metals with random structure. The idea proposed that size, shape and distribution in porous metals are all ordered, which contributes to achieve the structure design and help the prediction of properties. Traditional methods are difficult to control the pore size, shape and distribution by gas, solid and hollow spheres. The direct rapid prototype technique can achieve the structure design and control, but there are some inevitable limitations. Therefore, the indirect method combining the infiltration casting and the selected laser sintering technique is carried out in this study. The 2D honeycomb structure and the 3D ordered porous structure can be both fabricated by this new method. The whole simulation process including modeling the ordered porous structure, fabricating the ordered porous specimen, and predicting the properties of the ordered porous metals can be achieved. Through this way the optimum structures and properties of ordered porous aluminum can be obtained.