A review on Fabrication Methods and Analysis of Mechanical Properties of Metal Foams

Abstract

Metal foams are manufactured by various methods which include foaming of molten metal alloy and powder metallurgical processing. Some non conventional methods have also been developed for the manufacturing of metal foams. Metal foams have many interesting characteristics such as high resistance to deformation (stiffness), low specific gravity (specific weight), high resistance to compression and high energy absorption etc. Because of these characteristics metal foams find wide applications mainly in the field of construction where light weight is required, crash and impact energy absorption and in the field of thermal and sound insulation. Metal foams are cellular structure which consists of solid metal mainly (Aluminium, steels, iron etc) with micro pores filled with gas (hydrogen, carbon di oxide, nitrogen, argon etc). The metal foams are open cell or closed cell in nature. The gas comprises a large part of the volume of metal foam. In this review paper different methods for producing metal foam and their mechanical properties analysis are discussed especially for aluminium foam.