Preparing Aluminum Foam Using Melt Foaming Method And Process Study

With the progress of science and technology, the requirements on new materials arehigher and higher. Metal foam, which has many advantages, for example light weight,energy absorption, heat insulation, sound absorption and high specific strength, has drawngreater attention. One of the most representatives is aluminum foam, its preparationmethods varied and the level of process has been steadily progressing. In order to steadyprepare aluminum foam samples with small aperture, high porosity, uniform structure andfew defects. The paper particularly studied on preparation of aluminum foam using meltfoaming and its process, and discussed the compressive mechanical properties of theobtained samples, and introduced three-dimensional reconstruction of the specificprocedure of aluminum foam model.This paper started from the experimental study of preparing aluminum foam usingthe conventional melt foaming and summarized five common defects of the obtainedsamples. By the theoretical analysis of bubbling procedure, completed the conventionalmelt foaming process improvement by using the method of the comparative test anddetermined the ranges of process parameters. Taking titanium hydride content, magnesiumcontent, calcium content, mixing time, soaking time as the influencing factors, which havefour different values in their corresponding ranges, and taking average aperture, porosity,uniformity as the test indicators, completed the five factors and four levels of orthogonalexperiment with improved the process conditions of melt foaming. Evaluated the effectsof various process factors to the pore structure indicators by using range analysis method,and determined the optimal parameters in the laboratory conditions by using weightedcomprehensive evaluation method. The compression tests were carried out and get therelationship that compressive stress-strain curve changes with porosity. On the basis ofsummarizing three classical models of aluminum foam, proposed that thethree-dimensional reconstruction technology was applied to the aluminum foam modeling,and introduced the reconstruction procedure specifically, which was rarely reported in thefield of metal foam.The obtained aluminum foam sample, whose porosity range is 69%~89%, average aperture range is 3~4mm, uniformity reaches up to 91%, have fewer defects. Under theoptimal parameters conditions, the porosity is 85%, the average aperture is 3.4mm, theuniformity is 88% and no obvious defects.