Impact Of Metal Foams In Engineering Materials: A Research Proposal

Background

Metal foams are class of materials having low densities with mechanical, electrical, physical and acoustic properties. They help in offering potential for lightweight structures in order to absorb energy for thermal management (Feng et al. 2015). These foams are new class of material that are unfamiliar for normal use by engineers. Aluminum foams are manufactured by applying different methods in including direct foaming of aluminum alloy melts and different advanced metal powder processing.

Liquid metal forms have been mixture of gas bubbles and molten alloys. The evolvement of metal foams have been done from the late 1950s to the 1970s. The operability of metal foaming processes has been shown and commercialization (Chen, Gao and Shi 2014). This process led to limits by applying very complex area including metal foaming.

The excessive use of metal ores all over the world have been providing pressure on the extent of metal ores. The non-renewal resources have been used at a large pace. The use of metal ores have been excessively used (Zheng et al. 2014). Therefore, metal foams have been helping in maintaining the use of metal and replacing with metal foams.

This study focuses on the different types of the metal foams and its uses in the market.  The issues in the use of metals and how metal foams have helped in minimizing these issues have been discussed.

The aim of study is to identify the impact of metal foams in engineering materials.

The objectives of the research are as follows:

• To identify impact of metal foams used in engineering materials
• To identify challenges in using metal foams as engineering materials
• To mitigate these challenges using certain strategies

The research questions are as follows:

• What is the impact of metal foams used in engineering materials?
• What challenges are faced in using metal foams as engineering materials?
• How to mitigate these challenges in using metal foams as an engineering materials?

                                            

                                                                                   (Source: Created by author)

Modern research has been focusing in the technology of inventing new materials for producing structural elements of low density and enhanced performances. Therefore, researchers have been looking for lighter elements for constructing structures in order to reduce weight and energy saving. Metal foams have been simulated with structure including pores, spongy and cellular materials. Metal foams contain Nickel (Ni), Aluminum (Al), Zinc (Zn), Magnesium (Mg) and Titanium (Ti) alloys (Garcia-Avila, Portanova and Rabiei 2015). Metal foams with open and closed cells have been produced in the market. Metal foams have been a mixture of gas metal having high volume percent of gas in the mixture.

The mechanical properties of metal foams have been affected by several factors including properties of solid material used for preparing metal foam, Fraction volume of solid material and spatial arrangement of solid structure of metal form. Metal foams can be produced by melting of metal powder and foaming of molten metal. However, in this process aluminum alloys can be foamed by mixing of foaming agent. Various shaped foam components and 3D shaped sandwich panels include cores of foam and face sheets of aluminum have been developed (Cunsolo et al. 2015). These metal foams have been based on light-weight metals with several properties including high stiffness and conjunction with low weight and high compression abilities. Therefore, these metal foams have been used instead pf metals. These foams are produced by gas injection from an external source of gas bubbles during melting process. Some experimental proof for action of stabilizing particles in metal foams have been studied.

Rationale

The research will be based on the secondary approach of methodology. A qualitative approach will be used in order to collect data and information related to the metal foams.  The research design will be focused on experimental design of analyzing the properties of metal foams. There are three kinds of metal foams used in this research study including Alporas foams (Al-5%Ca-3%Ti) [5] of different densities, an aluminum foam (Al-1%Mg-0.5%Si) made by salt replication process, and Mepura foam (Al-10%Si) [6] fabricated by powder metallurgy. An MTS hydraulic machine will be utilized for quasi-static compression and indentation with constant crosshead speed for recording the stress-strain curves (Alipanah and Li 2016). The indentation tests will be performed with flat-bottomed circular cylindrical indenters. The structure of metal foams will be investigated by X-ray tomography. The X-ray tomography will be performed with a cone-beam system with resolution of 50 mm (Ranut, Nobile and Mancini 2014). There has been a computer controlled DAKEL_XEDO-3 AE system will be used for monitoring acoustic emission response of metal foams.

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish	Predecessors
Research Requirements Analysis	2 days	Mon 6/4/18	Tue 6/5/18
Research Topic Approval from Supervisor	1 day	Wed 6/6/18	Wed 6/6/18	2
Research Plan Charter development	2 days	Thu 6/7/18	Fri 6/8/18	3,2
Research Framework	4 days	Mon 6/11/18	Thu 6/14/18	4,2
Draft Proposal	2 days	Fri 6/15/18	Mon 6/18/18	5,4
Research Team formation	2 days	Tue 6/19/18	Wed 6/20/18	6
Research Requirement analysis	1 day	Thu 6/21/18	Thu 6/21/18	6,8
Research Questions identification	4 days	Fri 6/22/18	Wed 6/27/18	8,9
Research scope	4 days	Thu 6/28/18	Tue 7/3/18	10
Research Timeline	4 days	Wed 7/4/18	Mon 7/9/18	10,11
Allocation of Resources and Time for the Research	2 days	Tue 7/10/18	Wed 7/11/18	10,11,12
Research Initiation	4 days	Thu 7/12/18	Tue 7/17/18	13
Research Problems	4 days	Wed 7/18/18	Mon 7/23/18	13,14
Necessary Media access	1 day	Tue 7/24/18	Tue 7/24/18	13,16
Online Library access	1 day	Tue 7/24/18	Tue 7/24/18	13,16
Literary Sources selection	2 days	Wed 7/25/18	Thu 7/26/18	13,17,18
Literature Review	4 days	Fri 7/27/18	Wed 8/1/18	19
Primary data collection	10 days	Thu 8/2/18	Wed 8/15/18	19,20
Secondary Data collection	5 days	Thu 8/16/18	Wed 8/22/18	21
Primary Data	4 days	Thu 8/23/18	Tue 8/28/18	21,22
Secondary Data	4 days	Wed 8/29/18	Mon 9/3/18	24
Data Evaluation	6 days	Tue 9/4/18	Tue 9/11/18	21,22,23,24
Research  reflection	2 days	Wed 9/12/18	Thu 9/13/18	27
Learning Outcomes documentation	2 days	Wed 9/12/18	Thu 9/13/18	27
Issues Identification and Future Planning	5 days	Fri 9/14/18	Thu 9/20/18	29,28
All Activities completion	1 day	Fri 9/21/18	Fri 9/21/18	30

                                                                                    (Source: Created by Author)

References

Alipanah, M. and Li, X., 2016. Numerical studies of lithium-ion battery thermal management systems using phase change materials and metal foams. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 102, pp.1159-1168.

Chen, Z., Gao, D. and Shi, J., 2014. Experimental and numerical study on melting of phase change materials in metal foams at pore scale. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 72, pp.646-655.

Cunsolo, S., Oliviero, M., Harris, W.M., Andreozzi, A., Bianco, N., Chiu, W.K. and Naso, V., 2015. Monte Carlo determination of radiative properties of metal foams: Comparison between idealized and real cell structures. International Journal of Thermal Sciences, 87, pp.94-102.

Diani, A., Bodla, K.K., Rossetto, L. and Garimella, S.V., 2015. Numerical investigation of pressure drop and heat transfer through reconstructed metal foams and comparison against experiments. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 88, pp.508-515.

Feng, S., Zhang, Y., Shi, M., Wen, T. and Lu, T.J., 2015. Unidirectional freezing of phase change materials saturated in open-cell metal foams. Applied Thermal Engineering, 88, pp.315-321.

Garcia-Avila, M., Portanova, M. and Rabiei, A., 2015. Ballistic performance of composite metal foams. Composite Structures, 125, pp.202-211.

Ranut, P., 2016. On the effective thermal conductivity of aluminum metal foams: Review and improvement of the available empirical and analytical models. Applied Thermal Engineering, 101, pp.496-524.

Ranut, P., Nobile, E. and Mancini, L., 2014. High resolution microtomography-based CFD simulation of flow and heat transfer in aluminum metal foams. Applied thermal engineering, 69(1-2), pp.230-240.

Zheng, Z., Wang, C., Yu, J., Reid, S.R. and Harrigan, J.J., 2014. Dynamic stress–strain states for metal foams using a 3D cellular model. Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, 72, pp.93-114.