Mechanical Alloying of Secondary Raw Material for Foam Aluminum Production

Abstract

Interest in developing new compositions and technology for preparing foam aluminum is explained by the existence for objects of this material of an unusual set of properties: low density, low thermal and electrical conductivity, good resistance to the action of fire, ecological cleanliness, and capacity to absorb impact energy effectively. Foam aluminum is prepared by liquid- and solid-phase methods, and mainly from primary materials, which is quite expensive. One of the solid phase (or powder) methods is mechanical alloying, which is a most promising direction for composite material production. This is one of the most contemporary methods for preparing precipitation hardening ceramic particles of composite materials based on nonferrous metals. Foam aluminum may be considered as a composite where instead of ceramic particles there are particles of porofor TiH₂. Therefore, mechanical alloying may also be considered as a promising method for its preparation. The method includes treatment of powder components and their mixtures in high-energy mills followed by consolidation of a uniform activated mixture in order to prepare a semiproduct or finished component. Another advantage of mechanical alloying is the possibility of using aluminum alloy production waste, which significantly cheapens production (raw material component in the cost of production is reduced by 45–65%). Results are provided for studying the process of modeling and development of technology for preparing foam aluminum from aluminum secondary raw material.