Evaluation of strength of porous aluminum by aluminum alloy powder addition

Abstract

Open-cell porous aluminum (Al) was fabricated by spark plasma sintering process. In this process, a mixture of pure Al powder, 6061 aluminum alloy powder and sodium chloride (NaCl) powder as spacer particle was used as starting materials. The powder mixture was sintered by spark plasma sintering process. NaCl was removed by placing the sintered mixture in water, and pores were formed. In this study, pore structures of obtained porous Al were nondestructively observed by X-ray computing tomography (CT). It was shown that strength of porous Al was improved by 6061 aluminum alloy powder addition.