Corrugated Structure Reinforcing Aluminum Foam

Abstract

Metal foams have a number of established niche market and potential applications under investigation due to their peculiarities including thermal, acoustic and mechanical properties at low weight. In order to produce structures resistant at high temperature and acting as barrier to the fire, metals with closed cells are often required, and one of the most consolidate manufacturing process for their production is the gas releasing particles decomposition in semisolids, by means of which a foam is created by a foaming agent dispersed into a precursor. In previous researches, the authors have investigated the possibility of foaming the aluminum starting by a precursor, placed between two skins consisting of steel grids, in order to obtain a sandwich structure at the same time of the foaming step. In line to continue on this topic and to improve the compression strength of the aluminum-foamed core, in this work the steel grid was used both as skins and as a corrugated skeleton inside the core. Different types of sandwich structures were manufactured, following some experimental tests executed to determine the optimal value of temperature and time to foam the precursor. Then, compression tests were carried out, in order to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed solution on the improvement of this mechanical behavior. The mechanical tests highlighted the increase of mechanical properties using this type of corrugated core.

An Experimental–Numerical Analysis of Innovative Aluminum Foam-Based Sandwich Constructions Under Compression Loads

“…8 reporting the density mean values of both the reinforced sandwich structures and of the foam inside in only, it is possible to note that the density values decrease when the thickness of the sandwich structure increases; in particular, the maximum value of 0.9 g/cm 3 was found for the RF S,8 sandwiches that have the smallest thickness, equal to 8 mm. An increase of the global density for RF S,C,16 samples can be observed due to the skeleton grid inside; however, the density value of the foam constituting the core keeps relatively low, proving the capability of the foam to penetrate the grid without affecting the cells structure [24].…”

“…Two types of sandwich structures were considered [24]: the former is characterized by a core in aluminum foam and the skins consisting of a stainless-steel mesh grid reinforcing the same foam (referred below to as RF S ); the latter is similar to the first one, but the aluminum foam presents a corrugated skeleton of the same steel mesh grid used for the skin (referred to as RF S,C ). For the first type of sandwich structures, three values of core thickness were considered: 8, 12 and 16 mm (also referred in the rest of the text to as RF S,8 , RF S,12 and RF S,16 , respectively); while, for the second type, only a core thickness of 16 mm was considered (and referred to as RF S,C,16 in text).…”

Production of PP Composites Reinforced with Flax and Hemp Woven Mesh Fabrics via Compression Molding

“…All sample types were produced with a conventional compression molding press. The molding temperature was fixed at 200 °C, the pressure at about 4 MPa and the total molding time at 300 s, considering the studies cited in the introduction [29]. Two molding strategies are considered:…”

“…The second strategy (ii) was considered in order to further simplify the molding process without any control of the waiting time, the only requirement is that the molding plate have to be at the molding temperature (200 °C) before the process starts. The molding temperature was fixed at 200 • C, the pressure at about 4 MPa and the total molding time at 300 s, considering the studies cited in the introduction [29]. Two molding strategies are considered:…”

“…This solution is very common in the building construction field [26][27][28]. The mesh can indeed guarantee a mechanical interlocking inside the matrix, this solution is successfully utilized in some metal foam [29] and building construction works [28,30].…”