Syntactic foams produced by pressure infiltration - the effect of pressure and time on infiltration length

Abstract

Ceramic hollow microballoons were incorporated into aluminium matrix to produce metal matrix syntactic foams (MMSFs). Syntactic foams have low density and relatively high strength; therefore they can be used as materials of many important parts in automotive technology or in aviation and sea industry. The MMSFs can be produced by pressure infiltration technique, which can be productive if it is modified in the direction of injection casting. The aim of this paper is to determine the necessary pressure and time parameters for the successful infiltration of a given length. A measurement system was developed and applied to investigate the effect of pressure and time on infiltrated length. In this paper the results of these preliminary measurements are presented. Power law ruled surface was fitted on the measured points in order to evaluate the infiltrated length for any pressure and time parameters. The results were compared to the theoretically predicted ones and on this base an advanced measurement system is s uggested and designed.