Corrugated Structure Reinforcing Aluminum Foam

Antonio Formisano,Antonio Viscusi,Dario De Fazio,Luca Boccarusso,Luigi Carrino,Massimo Durante

doi:10.25518/esaform21.4036

Abstract

Metal foams have a number of established niche market and potential applications under investigation due to their peculiarities including thermal, acoustic and mechanical properties at low weight. In order to produce structures resistant at high temperature and acting as barrier to the fire, metals with closed cells are often required, and one of the most consolidate manufacturing process for their production is the gas releasing particles decomposition in semisolids, by means of which a foam is created by a foaming agent dispersed into a precursor. In previous researches, the authors have investigated the possibility of foaming the aluminum starting by a precursor, placed between two skins consisting of steel grids, in order to obtain a sandwich structure at the same time of the foaming step. In line to continue on this topic and to improve the compression strength of the aluminum-foamed core, in this work the steel grid was used both as skins and as a corrugated skeleton inside the core. Different types of sandwich structures were manufactured, following some experimental tests executed to determine the optimal value of temperature and time to foam the precursor. Then, compression tests were carried out, in order to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed solution on the improvement of this mechanical behavior. The mechanical tests highlighted the increase of mechanical properties using this type of corrugated core.

Highlights

IntroductionMetallic sandwich structures have attracted attention for applications in engineering fields, ranging from aerospace structures to transportation industry [1], and different sandwich structures have been studied with different cores such as foams [2,3] and honeycomb [4,5]
During the last years, metallic sandwich structures have attracted attention for applications in engineering fields, ranging from aerospace structures to transportation industry [1], and different sandwich structures have been studied with different cores such as foams [2,3] and honeycomb [4,5].Metal foams are very innovative foams, made by cellular structures consisting of solid metal, containing a large volume fraction of gas-filled pores, with properties depending on the metal nature and their morphology [6]
The first set of compression tests concerned the characterization of the sandwich structures realized using the steel mesh grid only as the skins

Summary

Introduction

Metallic sandwich structures have attracted attention for applications in engineering fields, ranging from aerospace structures to transportation industry [1], and different sandwich structures have been studied with different cores such as foams [2,3] and honeycomb [4,5]. The compression behavior of an innovative metal sandwich structure, manufactured without the employment of a mold and consisting of a core in aluminum foam and skins made of stainless steel wire mesh-grid, was analyzed; the wire mesh-grid was used as mold, in the sense that the aluminum alloy core foamed inside the mesh-grid incorporating it. This flexible solution can offer, among other things, the possibility of manufacturing sandwiches with complex geometries by using localized heating, with consequent customized production and costefficiency. A comparison in terms of compressive yield stress among panels of only metal foam, the sandwich structure with the skins consisting of stainless steel wire mesh-grid and the same sandwich structure with the core in metal foam reinforced by the corrugated grid was carried out

Materials and manufacturing processes

Uniaxial compression tests

Results and discussion

Conclusions