Title: Investigation on the effect of aluminium foam made of A413 aluminium alloy through stir casting and infiltration techniques

Authors: R. Karuppasamy; Debabrata Barik; N.M. Sivaram; Milon Selvam Dennison

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Karpagam Academy of Higher Education, Coimbatore, 641021, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Karpagam Academy of Higher Education, Coimbatore, 641021, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Puducherry, Karaikal, 609 609, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Karpagam Academy of Higher Education, Coimbatore, 641021, India

Abstract: The objective of this research work is to manufacture lightweight aluminium cellular structure through stir casting and infiltration technique from base metal alloy aluminium A413. In stir casting technique, along with the molten base metal alloy foaming agent calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) is mixed with different compositions, thorough mixing yielded metal foam and in case of infiltration technique the base metal alloy is mixed with different compositions of sodium chloride (NaCl) particles which act as a space holder in the fabrication of the metal foam. Properties such as density, the percentage of porosity, compressive strength and microstructure are analysed for the metal foam produced with both the techniques. The study revealed that the addition of the NaCl as a space holder increases the percentage of porosity and decreases the density of the foam in comparison with CaCO₃.

Keywords: aluminium foam; stir casting; foaming agent; infiltration; microstructure.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMATEI.2020.104790

International Journal of Materials Engineering Innovation, 2020 Vol.11 No.1, pp.34 - 50

Received: 12 Apr 2019
Accepted: 27 Apr 2019
Published online: 31 Jan 2020 *

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