The Effect of Different Composition of Stainless Steel (SS316L) Foam via Space Holder Method

Abstract

Stainless Steel materials (SS316L) generally known as a highly wear performance and resistant to corrosion. The purpose in this study is to produce the stainless steel foam and physical properties of sintered 316L stainless steel materials produced by powder metallurgy (P/M) method. In this paper, the method is based on using spherical urea as space holder was investigated. Then, the foams will be given to consider the properties of SS316L foam after sintering process. Powder metallurgy process needs to go through the mixing, pressing, sintering and analysis. The selected compositions of SS316L were varied from 50 wt % to 60 wt % SS316L, respectively while the remaining percentages are foaming agent. The SS316L powders were cold-pressed with 8 tons pressure and sintered at 1200°C via tube furnace. The SS316L foams were then characterised using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) for morphological characterisation of the samples after sintering process. Lastly, porosity and density were tested for this sample. As a result, the composition with 60 wt % SS316L is provided higher bulk density and lower porosity which are 4.34 g/cm3 and 69.03 %, respectively.