抄録
Foam metals are interested as new materials and many researches are continued. Major method for making foam metal is to add the foaming agent into molten metal before casting. However, source metals are limited only to low-melting-point metals. To make foam metal that has high melting point, new methods must be developed. Therefore, methods using metal powder and water based binder are investigated. In one of these methods, slurry is prepared by mixing the metal powder and the water based binder, and foaming agent is added into this. After that, the slurry is heated, and dried. During this process, the slurry foamed into high porosity green body is obtained. In another method, the slurry and paraffin wax are mixed with detergent agent, and frozen. After the paraffin wax is removed and porous green body is obtained. In these processes, the green bodies are sintered and foam metals are obtained. These methods can be applied to most kinds of powder metals and we applied them to make foam stainless steel. Using these methods, foam stainless steel that has more than 80% porosity can be obtained.
