The effect of unintended porosity on the first compressive stress maximum of alumina hollow sphere-filled bimodal composite metal foams

Abstract

Bimodal composite metal foams made from Al99.5 aluminium and quasi-eutectic Sr-modified AlSi12 matrix were investigated, where the bimodality was introduced by two alumina hollow sphere sets with nominal diameters of Ø7.0 and Ø2.4 mm in various volume concentrations. The research aimed to determine the effect of the cell structure (especially the unintended porosity) on the first compressive stress maximum, depending on the applied matrix material. The various features of the cell structure were quantitatively measured in composite metal foams by filtering raw computed tomography analysis data. The casting porosity, the wetting porosity, the porosity from the various-sized hollow spheres, and the partially matrix-filled hollow spheres have been successfully distinguished based on volumetric and geometrical conditions, such as sphericity and compactness. The unintended porosity (as the sum of the casting porosity and the wetting porosity) influences the first compressive stress maximum of the Al99.5 matrix composite metal foams. In contrast, for the AlSi12Sr bimodal foams, the results correlated with the total porosity values. The first compressive stress maximum could be estimated well from the compressive yield strength of the matrix and the total porosity of the foam.

Keywords

• Bimodal composite metal foam
• CT analysis
• Compression test
• Void structure
• Syntactic foam