Experimental analysis of cold sprayed precursors for closed-cells aluminum foams

Metal foams are a relatively new class of materials with many interesting combinations of physical and mechanical properties. Among them, the closed-cells aluminum foams are the most interesting for structural applications in the aerospace industry. There exist different methods to produce metal foams. An innovative manufacturing technique was developed in this study, proving the possibility to produce closed-cells aluminum foams through the cold spray additive manufacturing technology (CS). In particular, two different sets of samples were produced by varying the cold spray process parameters aiming at: i) studying the advantages and the issues of cold spray for manufacturing precursors for metal foams; ii) analyzing the correlation among the CS printing strategy and parameters, the foaming process and the physical and the morphological characteristics of the resulting foams; iii) finally, finding appropriate conditions to form closed-cells aluminum foams via CS.