CONTROL OF METAL FOAM STRUCTURE USING MICROWAVE HEATING

Abstract

Metal foam is a field which is currently lying in a vicious loop in which metal foam specific properties based application haven’t been exploited because of fabrication process limitation for foam production and since we aren’t able to produce good quality foam we don’t exploit their applications. To breakout of this loop, development of new technique is a necessity. Even with the presence and development of several techniques we still aren’t able to achieve the ability to control the structure and morphology, or have a short treatment cycle and even in many techniques we still aren’t able to achieve reproducible result. Additionally, current techniques are all based on conventional heating mechanism which severely suffers from its slow responsiveness hence control over heating rate become slow. There are also some other limitations such as low energy efficiency, large duration for manufacturing, inability to get good results and additionally very high manufacturing cost. In this research work we experimented with microwave based heating. We choose microwave based heating and even experimented with conventional heating mechanism. Microwave based heating was selected by taking in consideration of various advantages such as its energy and time efficiency, ability to cause inside-out heating, high sensitivity of the technique which could enable us to have much better control over heating rate. Additionally, microwave possess both electrical and magnetic component which will interact with material and will cause agitation within the sample. In our study we will be discussing the various factor such as effect of composition, compaction pressure, gravity and even the heat treatment provided either by microwave or by conventional heating, which plays an important role in deciding the final structure of foam. Additionally, we will also be performing some mechanical tests and will provide the comparison between these two heat treatment.