Metal foams produced by PM route (the role of ambient humidity)

C.JIMÉNEZ; F.GRACIA MORENO; J.BANHART; M. T. MALACHEVSKY; A.YAWNY

Santa Barbara, EE.UU.

Otro; Porous Materials Summer School; 2006

International Center for Materials Research

I integrate the NuMaDi Group of the Centro Atómico Bariloche in Argentina as PhD student. The Group has been working on aluminum foams since February 2003. Dr. Malachevsky and I initiated this research line during a Summer School of the Instituto Balseiro. The results were presented at the CONAMET-SAM / Simposio Materia held at Bariloche, Argentina [1,2]. Based on these results, we decided to follow up this research line in the frame of my Seminar Project needed to obtain the Materials Engineer degree. Then closed cell aluminium foams had been successfully fabricated by the PM route. Both the meso and microstructure and the mechanical properties were investigated [3,4]. The obtained foams are far from optimal, so this was decided to be the research subject for my PhD. Dr. Yawny of the Metals Group of the Centro Atómico Bariloche was invited to join this research as co-director due to his vast experience in mechanical properties. For the last five months I’ve been doing a research work in the Group leaded by Prof. Dr. Banhart at the Hahn-Meitner-Institut, Berlin, Germany with a DAAD fellowship. Dr García Moreno is supervising the research. This is one of the most experienced and recognized groups in the world working on metal foams produced by PM route. The experiments are mainly focused on studying the influence on foaming process of the relative ambient humidity. The water in contact with the oxide layer covering the surface of aluminium particles, form hydroxides or is directly adsorbed. The humidity entrapped during the compaction seems to have a detrimental effect in the foamability of the compacts.