Fabrication of Aluminum Tubes Filled with Aluminum Alloy Foam by Friction Welding

Materials

Yoshihiko Hangai⁴  Yukiko Nakano⁴  Shinji Koyama⁴  Osamu Kuwazuru¹  Soichiro Kitahara³  Nobuhiro Yoshikawa² 

[1] Graduate School of Engineering, University of Fukui, Fukui 910-8507, Japan;Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan;Hokudai Co., Ltd., Abira 059-1434, Japan;Graduate School of Science and Technology, Gunma University, Kiryuu 376-8515, Japan;

关键词: cellular materials;    composites;    friction welding;    X-ray computed tomography;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ma8105373

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Aluminum foam is usually used as the core of composite materials by combining it with dense materials, such as in Al foam core sandwich panels and Al-foam-filled tubes, owing to its low tensile and bending strengths. In this study, all-Al foam-filled tubes consisting of ADC12 Al-Si-Cu die-cast aluminum alloy foam and a dense A1050 commercially pure Al tube with metal bonding were fabricated by friction welding. First, it was found that the ADC12 precursor was firmly bonded throughout the inner wall of the A1050 tube without a gap between the precursor and the tube by friction welding. No deformation of the tube or foaming of the precursor was observed during the friction welding. Next, it was shown that by heat treatment of an ADC12-precursor-bonded A1050 tube, gases generated by the decomposition of the blowing agent expand the softened ADC12 to produce the ADC12 foam interior of the dense A1050 tube. A holding time during the foaming process of approximately t_H = 8.5 min with a holding temperature of 948 K was found to be suitable for obtaining a sound ADC12-foam-filled A1050 tube with sufficient foaming, almost uniform pore structures over the entire specimen, and no deformation and minimum reduction in the thickness of the tube.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.