Experimental study on the tensile strength of a sintered porous metal composite

A novel sintered porous metal composite (SPMC) has been developed by sintering a mixture of a high-porosity open-cell copper foam plate and copper powders with spherical particle shape. The sintered density of the SPMC specimens with different copper particle sizes was investigated under different sintering parameters. The SPMC shows a lower sintered density and a higher porosity than the sintered copper powder (SCP). A uniaxial tensile test was used to study the tensile strength and specific strength (strength-to-density ratio) of the SPMC specimens under different sintering parameters. The test result shows that, depending on the sintering parameters, the tensile strength of SPMC specimens with a copper particle size of 50–75 μm ranges from 8.64 MPa to 25.1 MPa and the specific tensile strength ranges from 1.59 kN m/kg to 4.45 kN m/kg. Under the same sintering condition, the tensile strength of the SPMC is lower than that of the SCP while their specific tensile strengths are nearly the same. The sintering temperature has a significant influence on both the tensile strength and the specific tensile strength of the SPMC while the sintering time has less effect.