Experimental Determination of Relative Density and Percentage Porosity of Open Cell Aluminium foam Produced from Sand Salt Mould Method

Abstract

Metallic foams have received broad attention due to their potential applications in many different fields, such as sound insulation, heat exchangers, filters, and catalyst carriers. In the last two decades metallic foams, which are porous metals with high porosity and relatively large cells, have been developed and are growing in use as new functional materials because of the unique combination of properties which can be derived from their cellular structure. Aluminium foam is a light weight porous material which appears to be promising metallic foam especially for aerospace applications. Aluminium foam can be produced by different methods like direct foaming with foaming agents in a metal powder mixture, direct foaming with foaming agents in a melt, by using different casting techniques etc., But each process will have its own advantages and shortcomings. There is a need for producing aluminium foam from easily available materials with low cost. In the present work, an attempt has been made to develop open cell aluminium foam from sand salt mould method using NaCl crystal as space holder whose relative density and percentage porosity were determined experimentally.