engleski

Reproducibility of aluminum foams energy absorption

Aluminium foam is, principally, a composite material consisting of aluminium or aluminium alloy matrix and of pores filled up with a gas distributed throughout the matrix. Although it is many years since the first patents concerning the manufacture of metallic foams appeared, the material has not been put into large-scale commercial production yet. This discouraging fact can be attributed to inadequate design of components, low reproducibility of properties, a lack of testing procedures and calculation approaches, absence of concepts for secondary treatment, as well as the production technologies being too complicated and relatively expensive. Metallic foams are excellent impact energy absorber, and they can convert impact energy into deformation energy and absorb more energy than bulk metal at low stress. This paper studies the reproducibility of aluminium foams energy absorption. Samples of aluminium foam were produced from an Alulight precursor (AlMgSi 0.6 TiH2-0.4). This precursor was placed into a mould form and heated up until the agent starts to foam. Immediately thereafter the mould is taken out of the furnace and cooled off, so the aluminium foam part is frozen in shape. The ability of samples to absorb mechanical energy was estimated from the results of compression tests. Tests were carried out by a universal test machine. Test results showed that aluminium foams have good energy absorption and repeatability is relatively low.

aluminium foams; energy absorption; compression test

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