Abstract
Porous aluminum is expected to be applied as a multifunctional material in automobiles because of very lightweight, high specific strength and high energy absorptivity. When aluminum alloy die castings are used as a starting material in the fabrication of porous aluminum, the gases intrinsically contained in the die casting can be used to generate pores. From the fact, it can be expected that porous aluminum with high porosity can be fabricated by adding a small amount of blowing agent. In this study, the amount of blowing agent from 0 to 1.4 mass% is added to ADC12 aluminum alloy die castings containing three different amounts of gases and porous aluminum is fabricated by the FSP (friction stir processing) route precursor method. The variations of porosity and pore structure with the amount of added blowing agent are investigated. Through the experimental results, it is shown that, by using a blowing agent of approximately 0.6 mass%, ADC12 porous aluminum can be fabricated with high porosity and good pore structure.
