Metal foam 'sandwich' is bendy but strong
- Kathleen Hamilton for Futurity July 16th, 2015
- Source: http://www.futurity.org/foam-sandwich-961452/
A layered material with a lightweight metal matrix syntactic foam core offers strength, even when bent or compressed.
In tests, the material showed promise for use in automobiles, trains, ships, and other applications.
Conventional metal foams have gas-filled pores within the metal, which reduce weight but pose some drawbacks, such as difficulty in controlling the size and shape of the pores during manufacturing.
By contrast, metal matrix syntactic foams incorporate porosity in their foam-like structure with hollow particles. In recent years there has been an upsurge in the use of these materials, mainly because of their compressive strength.
