Laser assisted aluminum foaming

Cellular solids in particular aluminum foam are a special class of light material that exhibit several unique characteristic applications in various areas of industry. In this paper laser assisted foaming experiments have been performed to fabricate closed cell porous aluminum structures with different relative densities (0.39–0.33) and porosity of (61–67%). It is found that the beam interaction time (tint=spot size/processing speed), plays a significant role in the cell morphology and the expansion mechanism of foam. The results show that the foam has large pores and lower density for slow processing speeds, in contrast to the fast processing speed with small pore size but higher density.