Production and Testing of Syntactic Metal Foams Reinforced with Aluminium-silicon Partially Infiltrated Carbon Fibre Bundles

Syntactic metal foams are porous materials with outstanding specific mechanical properties, such as high specific energy absorption and specific load-bearing capacity. However, due to the cellular structure, they are not suited for handling tensile loads. This study aims to create a composite structure in which carbon fibre bundles are embedded along the load direction in syntactic metal foams. The samples were produced by pressure infiltration of the fillers and the pre-infiltrated carbon fibre bundles. Tensile tests show that the fibre bundles increase the tensile load-bearing capacity of the specimens. The reference samples withstood 0.69 ± 0.07 kN tensile force. The reinforcement increased the density of the metal foam by 20% (from 1.21 ± 0.01 g∙cm−3 to 1.52 ± 0.01 g∙cm−3), while increasing the tensile load-bearing capacity to 1.80 ± 0.15 kN, an approximate increase of 260%, and 1.27 ± 0.10 kN an approximate increase of 180% in the case of 6 and 4 reinforcing carbon fibre bundles, respectively. The relationship between the load-bearing capacity (peak force) and the number of reinforcing carbon fibre bundles can be exactly described by a second-order polynomial function and can also be estimated by a simpler linear relationship.