Abstract
The purpose of this study is to manufacture the aluminum foam with high porosity by recycling of cheap aluminum foil chips. Aluminum foil chips are mixed with TiH_2 powder as a foaming agent, Al_2O_3 powder as a thickening agent and Zn powder as a sintering agent. The precursor is obtained by compressing the mixture at elevated temperature. Equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) is applied to the specimen without Zn in order to obtain dense precursor. The precursor is cut to columnar specimens. The foaming tests are carried out using the columnar specimens. The compressive tests are carried out of the foamed specimens for clarifying the compression behavior. The compressive tests are also carried out of ALPORAS. Conclusions are as follows. (1) Maximum porosity 36 % is obtained by heating the precursor with Zn powder. (2) The compressive behavior of the foamed specimen with Zn powder is not closed to ALPORAS and is close to dense aluminum, this is because the porosity of the specimen is much smaller than ALPORAS.
