• Korean Journal of Materials Research
• /
• v.21 no.6
• /
• pp.314-319
• /
• 2011

Melt foaming method is one of cost-effective methods to make metal foam and it has been successfully applied to fabricate Mg foams. In this research, AZ31 Mg alloy ingot was used as a metal matrix, using AlCa granular as thickening agent and $CaCO_3$ powder as foaming agent, AZ31 Mg alloy foams were fabricated by melt-foaming method at different foaming temperatures. The porosity was above 41.2%~73.3%, pore size was between 0.38~1.52 mm, and homogenous pore structures were obtained. Microstructure and mechanical properties of the AZ31 Mg alloy foams were investigated by optical microscopy, SEM and UTM. The results showed that pore structure and pore distribution were much better than those fabricated at lower temperatures. The compression behavior of the AZ31 Mg alloy foam behaved as typical porous materials. As the foaming temperature increased from $660^{\circ}C$ to $750^{\circ}C$, the compressed strength also increased. The AZ31 Mg alloy foam with a foaming temperature of $720^{\circ}C$ had the best energy absorption. The energy absorption value of Mg foam was 15.52 $MJ/m^3$ at a densification strain of 52%. Furthermore, the high energy absorption efficiencies of the AZ31 Mg alloy foam kept at about 0.85 in the plastic plateau region, which indicates that composite foam possess a high energy absorption characteristic, and the Vickers hardness of AZ31 Mg alloy foam decreased as the foaming temperature increased.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
• /
• 2004.04a
• /
• pp.382-387
• /
• 2004

Nanoindentation technique has been used to measure the mechanical properties of aluminium alloy foam cell walls. Al-Si-Cu-Mg alloy foams of different compositions and different cell morphologies were produced using powder metallurgical method. Cell morphology of the foam was controlled during production by varying foaming time and temperature. Mechanical properties such as hardness and Young's modulus were calculated using two different methods: a continuous stiffness measurement (CSM) and an unloading stiffness measurement (USM) method. Experimental results showed that hardness and Young's modulus of Al-5%(wt.)Si-4%Cu-4%Mg (544 alloy) precursor and foam walls are higher than those of Al-3%Si-2%Cu-2%Mg (322 alloy) precursor and foam walls. It was noticed that mechanical properties of cell wall are different from those of precursor materials.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
• /
• v.22 no.6
• /
• pp.309-315
• /
• 2012

Metal foam has many excellent properties, such as light weight, incombustibility, good thermal insulation, sound absorption, energy absorption, and environmental friendliness. It has two types of macrostructure, a closed-cell foam with sealed pores and an open-cell foam with open pores. The open-cell foam has a complex macrostructure consisting of an interconnected network. It can be exploited as a degradable biomaterial and a heat exchanger material. In this paper, open cell Mg alloy foams have been produced by infiltrating molten Mg alloy into porous pre-forms, where granules facilitate porous material. The granules have suitable strength and excellent thermal stability. They are also inexpensive and easily move out from open-cell foamed Mg-Al alloy materials. When the melt casting process used an inert gas, the molten magnesium igniting is resolved easily. The effects of the preheating temperature of the filler particle mould, negative pressure, and granule size on the fluidity of the open cell Mg alloy foam were investigated. With the increased infiltration pressure, preheat temperature and granule sizes during casting process, the molten AZ31 alloy was high fluidity. The optimum casting temperature, preheating temperature of the filler particle mould, and negative pressure were $750^{\circ}C$, $400-500^{\circ}C$, and 5000-6000 Pa, respectively, At these conditions the AZ31 alloy had good fluidity and castability with the longest infiltration length, fewer defects, and a uniform pore structure.

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
• /
• v.31 no.3
• /
• pp.145-151
• /
• 2011

Metallic foam has been known as a functional material which can be used for absorption properties of energy and sound. The unique characteristics of Al foam of mechanical, acoustic, thermal properties depend on density, cell size distribution and cell size, and these characteristics expected to apply industry field. Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy foams was fabricated by following process; firstly melting the Al alloy, thickening process of addition of Ca granule to increased of viscosity, foaming process of addition of titanium hydride powder to make the pores, holding in the furnace to form of cooling down to the room temperature. Metal foams with various porosity level were manufactured by change the foaming temperature. Compressive strength of the Al alloy foams was 2 times higher at 88% porosity and 1.2 times higher at 92% porosity than pure Al foams. It's sound and vibration absorption coefficient were higher than pure Al foams and with increasing porosity.

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
• /
• v.24 no.3
• /
• pp.165-174
• /
• 2004

The pore formation characteristic of Mg alloy during Lost Foam Casting(LFC) was investigated with reduced pressure test and real casting, which was compared with the results of previous work for Al alloy. Cast Mg alloys in LFC had much lower porosities in comparison with those of Al alloys. Also, the proper pouring temperature gave the minimum porosity like Al alloy although it was higher than that of Al alloys due to the worse fluidity of Mg alloy. The pore formation mechanism of Mg alloy in LFC was similar to that of AI alloy but the critical temperature showing the different mechanism is higher than that of Al alloy as much as $30{\sim}50^{\circ}C$. The result that Mg alloy in LFC had the lower porosity comparing with Al alloy was due to the extra solubility of hydrogen gas although the solubility of Al alloy was easily exceeded by the external sources like pyrolyzed polystyrene products. The mold evacuation gave the lower porosity due to the removal of polystyrene pyrolysis products, and reduced shrinkage defects. Also, there was a proper evacuation pressure that gave a porosity of almost 0vol%. But much higher vacuum degree than this proper pressure caused the severe entrapment of polymer pyrolysis products that gave the large porosity.

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
• /
• v.30 no.6
• /
• pp.217-223
• /
• 2010

Foamed metal has become an attractive material, which has unique physical, thermal, acoustic, damping and mechanical properties, because large amount of pores are distributed in the metal matrix. Therefore, metal foam can be used for the light weight application in automotive, locomotive, aerospace fields. Aluminum foams have been developed successfully and will be employed in the next generation of energy absorption boxes. Magnesium alloys are most eligible candidate to substitute aluminum alloy, especially for lower density and higher damping properties in wide industrial fields. Magnesium alloy foams are expected to be particularly advantageous due to two thirds the density of aluminum. However, foaming magnesium have been weakness of high activity, difficult processing and very dangerous. In order to upgrade this problem, AM50 magnesium alloy which has better characteristic is safe to use through foaming time and alloying element in this study.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
• /
• v.20 no.6
• /
• pp.819-827
• /
• 2006

The stress-strain relation of aluminum (Al) alloy foam cell wall was evaluated by the instrumented sharp indentation method. The indentation in a few micron ranges was performed on the cell wall of Al-alloy foam having a composition or Al-3wt.%Si-2wt.%Cu-2wt.%Mg as well as its precursor (material prior to foaming). To extract the stress-stram relation in terms of yield stress ${\sigma}_y$, strain hardening exponent n and elastic modulus E, the closed-form dimensionless relationships between load-indentation depth curve and elasto-plastic property were used. The tensile properties of precursor material of Al-alloy foam were also measured independently by uni-axial tensile test. In order to verify the validity of the extracted stress-strain relation, it was compared with the results of tensile test and finite element (FE) analysis. A modified cubic-spherical lattice model was proposed to analyze the compressive behavior of the Al-alloy foam. The material parameters extracted by the instrumented nanoindentation method allowed the model to predict the compressive behavior of the Al-alloy foam accurately.

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
• /
• v.26 no.6
• /
• pp.267-271
• /
• 2006

Metal foam is a class of attractive materials, which exhibits unique combinations of physical, mechanical, thermal, electrical and acoustic properties. In particular, it is light and good at absorbing energy, which makes it attractive in automotive and aerospace applications weight is critical. In this paper, the Mg alloy foam was prepared by melt foaming method by addition of calcium as thickening agent, and $TiH_2$ or $CaCO_3$ powder as blowing agent. The macrostructural observation of foamed Mg showed that the pore structures of Mg alloy foam made by $CaCO_3$ as blowing agent were much better than that of foams made by $TiH_2$ as blowing agent. In addition, this paper showed the possible reason of fabrication magnesium alloy foam in proportion to blowing agent and the porosity range was about 40 to 76% as results value.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.27 no.10
• /
• pp.1686-1694
• /
• 2003

The foam-filled tube beams can be used for the front rail and firewall structures to absorb impact energy during frontal or side collision of vehicles. In the case of side collision where bending is involved in the crushing mechanism, the foam filler would be effective in maintaining progressive crushing of the thin-walled structures so that much impact energy could be absorbed. In this study, bending behaviors of the closed-cell-aluminum-alloy-foam-filled stainless steel tube were investigated. The various foam-filled specimens including piecewise fillers were prepared and tested. The aluminum-alloy-foam filling offered the significant increase of bending resistance. Their suppression of the inward fold formation at the compression flange as well as the multiple propagating folds led to the increase of load carrying capacity of specimens. Moreover, the piecewise foams would provide the easier way to fill the thin-walled shell structures without the drawback of strength.

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
• /
• v.26 no.6
• /
• pp.272-276
• /
• 2006

For the first time AZ91 (MgAl9Zn1) and AM60 (MgAl6) Mg alloy foams with homogeneous pore structures were prepared successfully via melting foaming method by using $CaCO_3$ powder as blowing agent. The possible foaming mechanisms and pore structures of these Mg alloy foams were discussed and investigated. The results show that Mg alloy melt can affect $CaCO_3$ decomposition behavior and AZ91 Mg alloy is relative easy to be foamed into metal foam with high porosity and big pore size.