Aluminum foam development by filling architecture techniques and process optimization

Abstract

The aluminum foam is used in various industrial applications because of its superior strength to weight ratio. The FSP is used here for development of a precursor by processing a foamable mixture into the substrate. The filling of the foamable mixture is done by different techniques named: Buried hole, sandwich, and groove architecture. The developed precursor is then microwave heated for the development of foam. A comparison is made between the different filling techniques, number of passes and composition of the foamable mixture on the distribution of pores, size, porosity, and compressive behavior of the foam. It has been observed that the buried hole is more suitable for foam development owing to less wastage of foaming agent. The decomposed gases were fully utilized by trapping into the substrate. It is also observed that increasing the number of passes and weight % of TiH2, improves the distribution of pores. The buried hole technique shows the linear plateau stress in the compressive test as compared to other techniques. The highest porosity is close to 80% during buried hole technique, and the average pore diameter ranges between 0.4 and 1.69 mm for optimized samples.