Metal foams have attracted wide range of interest from researchers and industries because of their unique combinations of properties. Of particular interest, open cell metallic foams have good weight-specific mechanical properties, and improvements could make these materials highly desirable for lightweight structural and energy absorption applications. These properties could potentially be increased for open cell foams by treatments affecting their large surface areas. The effect could be very significant, especially when the dominant deformation mode is bending of the foam struts, as the coating will be located away from the neutral bending axis of these struts maximizing its effect. This has been previously found after the application of surface treatments, such as electroplating. The technique of Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation (PEO) is another process that shows an even greater effect on foam specific mechanical properties. In this work, Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation (PEO) coating treatment is applied to open celled aluminium foams with different structures, aiming to improve the mechanical and weight-specific properties of the hybrid material. Open cell aluminium foams of different types, both investment cast (Duocel foam) and replicated (produced in the laboratory) have been produced and PEO coated using a range of different processing parameters. Two pore sizes of Duocel aluminium foam (measured as 2.2 mm and 2.5 mm average pore diameter) with porosity of 90–91%, and a single pore size (1.6 mm diameter) of the pure aluminium replicated foam with porosity around 60–64% have been examined. The PEO treatment of foams was carried out in the pulsed bipolar current mode, with a range of processing times (20, 40, 60 and 80 minutes), pulse frequencies (50 to 6250 Hz) and duty cycles (different ON/OFF waveform ratios). These processing parameters were explored in the present work in four different stages of investigation, as will be explained in detail later. The mechanical properties (yield stress, specific strength, Young’s modulus and energy absorption) of the coated foams produced are assessed experimentally, both in tension and compression, and simple models developed to describe the elastic behaviour, based on either the Gibson-Ashby model of foams as a regular cellular array, or the Markaki-Clyne model of randomly intersecting fibres are used to make predictions to compare to these results. Complimentary characterisation was carried out using SEM, EDX, XRD and nanoindentation techniques to understand the nature of PEO coatings on foams (including coating thickness, growth rate, mechanical properties, porosity, elemental and phase compositions), and the effect this has on mechanical properties. Thereby, the process can be optimised to improve the mechanical performance of the foams. It was demonstrated that PEO coatings can be successfully applied to open cell foams (of low and high level of porosity) and the coating penetrates completely into the structure up to several millimetres depth, with thickness diminishing with depth. The presence of this coating is of benefit for uniaxial mechanical properties as well as specific foam properties. PEO pulse frequency influences coating thickness, porosity and the measured mechanical properties. The major effect on coating hardness and elastic modulus as well as on the strength and stiffness of the coated foams is associated with the volume fraction of porosity within the coating. The effect of using different duty cycles (associated with the ON and OFF times in each cycle in the current pulse frequency used) results in different coating morphology, thickness, distribution and deposition rate. Very fast coating growth rate has been shown to be not always beneficial, whereas low coating growth rate may be useful for the formation of good quality coatings (containing fewer microcracks and possibly lower intrinsic stresses), with potential for a very even distribution into the foam internal structure. An assessment based on strength increase (∆σ) and density increase (∆ρ) of the coated foams shows that the benefits of the application of PEO coatings to metal foams are greater than those shown in other metal foams coated by different techniques. The primary reason for this is that the oxide ceramic coatings formed on foams have low density, excellent mechanical properties and good adhesion to the substrate. These properties have been improved for foams by the PEO optimization process carried out in the present work.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:570168 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Abdulla, Taha |
| Contributors | Goodall, Russell ; Yerokhin, Aleksey |
| Publisher | University of Sheffield |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/3806/ |
Page generated in 0.0023 seconds