Elizondo Luna Erardo M, Barari Farzad, Woolley Robert, Goodall Russell
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The University of Sheffield;
Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Sheffield.
J Vis Exp. 2014 Dec 11(94):52268. doi: 10.3791/52268.
Metal foams are interesting materials from both a fundamental understanding and practical applications point of view. Uses have been proposed, and in many cases validated experimentally, for light weight or impact energy absorbing structures, as high surface area heat exchangers or electrodes, as implants to the body, and many more. Although great progress has been made in understanding their structure-properties relationships, the large number of different processing techniques, each producing material with different characteristics and structure, means that understanding of the individual effects of all aspects of structure is not complete. The replication process, where molten metal is infiltrated between grains of a removable preform material, allows a markedly high degree of control and has been used to good effect to elucidate some of these relationships. Nevertheless, the process has many steps that are dependent on individual "know-how", and this paper aims to provide a detailed description of all stages of one embodiment of this processing method, using materials and equipment that would be relatively easy to set up in a research environment. The goal of this protocol and its variants is to produce metal foams in an effective and simple way, giving the possibility to tailor the outcome of the samples by modifying certain steps within the process. By following this, open cell aluminum foams with pore sizes of 1-2.36 mm diameter and 61% to 77% porosity can be obtained.
从基础理解和实际应用的角度来看，金属泡沫都是有趣的材料。人们已经提出了其多种用途，并且在许多情况下通过实验得到了验证，比如用于制造轻质或吸收冲击能量的结构、作为高表面积热交换器或电极、作为人体植入物等等。尽管在理解它们的结构-性能关系方面已经取得了很大进展，但大量不同的加工技术，每种技术生产出的材料具有不同的特性和结构，这意味着对结构各方面的单独影响的理解并不完整。复制工艺是将熔融金属渗透到可移除预制材料的颗粒之间，它能实现显著高度的控制，并且已被有效地用于阐明其中一些关系。然而，该工艺有许多依赖个人“诀窍”的步骤，本文旨在详细描述这种加工方法一个实施方案的所有阶段，使用在研究环境中相对容易设置的材料和设备。该方案及其变体的目标是以有效且简单的方式生产金属泡沫，通过修改工艺中的某些步骤来调整样品的结果成为可能。按照这个方法，可以获得孔径为1 - 2.36毫米、孔隙率为61%至77%的开孔泡沫铝。
