Corrugated structure reinforcing aluminum foam

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.