Mechanical properties of lightweight aluminium hybrid composite foams (AHCFs) for structural applications
Ram Krishna Rathore, Nitish Kumar Singh, Agnivesh Kumar Sinha, Sanjay Kumar Panthi, Ashok Sharma
Abstract
Metallic foams are popular due to their high strength-to-weight ratio. Moreover, foams are excellent vibrations damper, which attracted attention of researchers. This study investigated the improvements in the characteristics of metal foams for the structural applications. The metal foams were fabricated by stir casting method using calcium carbonate (CaCO3) as foaming agent. The metallic foam generated are aluminium hybrid composite foam (AHCF) with densities varying between 0.88 and 1.14 g/cc. Developed AHCF was characterised for their physical and mechanical properties like density, porosity, three-point bending, compression and hardness followed by microstructural investigation. Results show that the percentage of the weight (wt.%) of the foaming agent plays a significant role in deciding the density, compressive strength, bending strength and the hardness of AHCF. The study reveals that compressive strength, flexural strength and the hardness of AHCFs increased with their density. AHCF exhibits lower density and higher specific strength when compared to aluminium (AA7075).