Aluminium foams prepared using concentrated solar power at Synlight

Abstract Possibility to prepare AlSi10 aluminium foams and also gradient aluminium foams using concentrated solar energy was tested experimentally. Moreover, the experiments with incorporating of ductile Advanced Pore Morphology Al1050 foams elements into brittle AlSi10 foam was also investigated. It was possible after certain optimisation of the process to prepare sound AlSi10 foams using the artificial solar energy in Synlight. The prepared foams have the size of 100 mm x 100 mm x 10 mm. The densities of foams were in the range of 0.7 – 1.5 g × cm −3 depending on the density of used Advanced Pore Morphology ductile Al1050 foam elements. Finally, the homogeneity of chosen prepared foams were investigated using X-ray 3D tomography. In the case of composite foams, the local heterogeneities in the structure were observable, especially for Advanced Pore Morphology Al1050 foam elements with density above 1 g × cm −3 .