Abstract
This article introduces an improvement to the fabrication of aluminum foams with small pore size by melt foaming method. Before added to the melt, the foaming agent (titanium hydride) was pretreated in two steps. It firstly went through the traditional pre-oxidation treatment, which delayed the decomposition of titanium hydride and made sure the dispersion stage was controllable. Then such pre-oxidized titanium hydride powder was mixed with copper powder in a planetary ball mill. This treatment can not only increase the number of foaming agent particles and make them easier to disperse in the melt, which helps to increase the number of pores, but also reduce the amount of hydrogen released in the foaming stage. Therefore, the pore size could be decreased. Using such a ball-milled foaming agent in melt foaming method, aluminum foams with small pore size (average size of 1.6 mm) were successfully fabricated.
Highlights
CLOSED-CELL aluminum foams, in which pores exist separately, have many unique properties compared to traditional dense metallic materials due to the existence of pore structure: light-weight, considerable energy absorption and sound insulation performance, good electromagnetic shielding ability, low thermal conductivity, etc.[1,2,3,4,5,6] These excellent properties allow aluminum foams to be used in many application fields.[7,8,9]Among various manufacturing methods, melt foaming method is one of the most widely used one.[8]
The pre-oxidized titanium hydride powder was mixed with copper powder in a planetary ball mill
Aluminum foams with small pore size can be obtained by introducing ball milling in the pretreatment process of titanium hydride
Summary
CLOSED-CELL aluminum foams, in which pores exist separately, have many unique properties compared to traditional dense metallic materials due to the existence of pore structure: light-weight, considerable energy absorption and sound insulation performance, good electromagnetic shielding ability, low thermal conductivity, etc.[1,2,3,4,5,6] These excellent properties allow aluminum foams to be used in many application fields.[7,8,9]. Melt foaming method is one of the most widely used one.[8] It has a simple procedure and is easy to fabricate large foam blocks, which makes it the most promising method for commercial production of aluminum foams.[10] Currently, typical pore size of aluminum foams made by melt foaming method is 3 to 6 mm.[11] with such range of pore size, the performance of the foam products is not good enough. Due to the existence of such problems, the development and applications of melt foaming method along with its products are limited
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