Materials Science & Engineering A 598 (2014) 343–349

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Materials Science & Engineering A

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/msea

Effect of SiC particle content on foaming and mechanical properties

of remelted and diluted A356/SiC composite
N.V. Ravi Kumar n, N. Ramachandra Rao, A.A. Gokhale
Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory, Kanchanbagh (P.O.), Hyderabad 500058, India

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A commercial Al–Si–Mg composite was diluted to different SiC (mean size: 8 mm) contents, and was
Received 2 December 2013 foamed using TiH2 by melt based technique at a fixed foaming temperature. Foams with high expansions
Received in revised form were achieved and uniform cell morphology is obtained at and below 10 vol% SiC. Despite good
15 January 2014
expansions, certain amount of foam collapse occurs for 5 vol% SiC composite. This work brings out that
Accepted 18 January 2014
Available online 24 January 2014
presence of SiC alone can lead to good foaming but these foams are unstable prior to solidification. This
instability can be correlated to in situ oxide content. Both compression and impact (perforation) tests
Keywords: show improved properties with the increase in foam density. Compressive strength is not influenced by
Al foam SiC content, and energy absorption too seems to be insensitive to the rate of loading within six orders of
Al MMC
magnitude.
Compression
& 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Impact

1. Introduction
Aluminium based closed cell foams are of interest due to their
ultra low density, high structural stiffness per unit weight and
high energy absorption per unit transmitted stress. When ceramic
particles (either ex-situ e.g. SiC or in situ e.g. TiB2) are present in
liquid aluminium while foaming, metal matrix composite (MMC)
foams can be produced. These particles can, in fact, act as liquid
foam stabilizers [1,2] and may further strengthen the foams by
strengthening the plateau borders and the cell walls.
During pure Al foam manufacturing by a melt route, blowing
agent [mostly titanium hydride (TiH2)] is added to calcium con-
taining aluminium melt under isothermal conditions. Generation
of Ca-rich in situ oxides which provide certain ‘viscosity’ to the
Al–Ca melt is very crucial in the foaming process. This melt
‘conditioning’ is necessary for foaming (i.e. achieving high expan-
sions) and for the liquid foam to remain firm until solidification
(termed as foam stability). In case of MMC foams there is no melt
conditioning step. However, the melt ‘viscosity’ increases due to
particle presence and depends on the particle size and content.
Therefore, for a given aluminium alloy, the material variables in
manufacturing MMC foams are (i) particle type, (ii) mean size, and
(iii) content (vol%). The role of particle size, and vol% on foam
expansion and stability were explored by many investigators [3–6]
including the present authors [7,8]. They observed that the particle
content (vol%) necessary to have a reasonable expansion decreases
with reducing particle size. Unlike Al–Ca alloy, Al-based MMCs are
available MMCs or even their scrap can be remelted and foamed.
This aspect of using an existing MMC for foaming trials was not
studied so far. Therefore, the objective of the present work is to
use a commercial MMC for foaming trials, and to explore the effect
of SiC content at a fixed SiC size. For this work, a Duralcan
aluminium composite with a matrix composition identical to
A356 (Al–7Si–0.3Mg) was chosen to compare with our previous
work [7] in which foaming of in-house prepared A356 MMC was
reported. Also studying the foaming behaviour in an available Al
composite having finer SiC size is an added advantage due to
inherent difficulties to prepare Al composites in-house with SiC
size o 10 mm through the melting route.
2. Materials and methods
Duralcan F3A 20S MMC, with an A356 aluminium alloy matrix
reinforced with 20 vol% SiC particles, was used in foaming trials.
The matrix alloy composition is given in Table 1. SiC content was
estimated with the acid dissolution method and mean particle size
was measured from several micrographs.
Table 1
Measured chemical compositions (wt%) of the F3A 20S composite matrix and
Al–Si–Mg alloy used for dilution experiments.

commercial materials. It would be a great advantage if readily Matrix alloy Si Mg Fe Ti Al SiC (vol%) SiC mean size (mm)

A356 7.1 0.39 0.10 0.08 Bal. 21.5 8

n
Corresponding author. Tel.: þ 91 40 2458 6364; fax: þ 91 40 2434 0683. Al–Si–Mg 6.9 0.28 0.12 – Bal. – –
E-mail address: nvravi_in@yahoo.co.uk (N.V. Ravi Kumar).

0921-5093/$ - see front matter & 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.msea.2014.01.050
344 N.V. Ravi Kumar et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 598 (2014) 343–349

All foaming experiments were carried out in a cylindrical clay composites having SiC contents lower than 20 vol%. Required
graphite crucible (inner diameter 90 mm) with a melt size of proportions of Duralcan composite and equivalent Al–Si–Mg alloy
1.35 kg. The Duralcan composite was diluted to obtain A356 (Table 1) were melted together at 700 1C under ambient condi-
tions. With intense mechanical stirring, diluted composite was
prepared. The liquid melt was cooled to 640 1C and was foamed
Table 2
Foam expansions for diluted composites with different SiC contents.
using 1.5 wt% TiH2. The foaming temperature was selected based
on our previous work with a similar system [7,9], the details of
Foam SiC vol% after Total expansiona Net which are described elsewhere [7]. For foaming trials, SiC contents
identification dilution expansionb of 15 vol%, 10 vol% and 5 vol% were selected (henceforth referred
as 15% SiC foam, 10% SiC foam, and 5% SiC foam). More trials were
DU-1 15 3.9 3.1
DU-2 10 5.5 5.2 conducted with 10% SiC diluted composite because of higher
DU-3 5 5.4 3.4 expansions and better foam quality. Details of foaming experi-
DU-4 10 5.8 5.4 ments are given in Table 2.
DU-5 10 6.3 6.2 The solid foams were sectioned longitudinally along the cylin-
a
Liquid foam expansion (ratio of liquid foam height/original melt height).
der axis by electro-discharge sawing (EDS). Structural examination
b
Retained expansion in solid foam (ratio of retained solid foam height/original melt was carried out visually on foam sections and by optical micro-
height); the difference between total and net expansion is foam collapse (see Ref. [7]). scopy for selected foam samples. Cell size (d) was measured on
digitized macro-sections (600 dpi) by individual measurements on
random straight-lines for at least 80 cells in the plane perpendi-
cular to the foaming direction. Cell wall thickness (δ) measure-
ments were performed on at least 25 digital micrographs.
Both compression (25  25 mm2 with 30 mm height), and
impact (60  60 mm2 with 10 mm thickness) samples were cut
by electro-discharge machining (EDM). As shown in Fig. 1, for
compression samples, the longer dimension coincides with foam-
ing as well as loading direction. Compression tests were carried
out on samples with densities varying between 0.22 and 0.64. For
10% SiC foam, samples of different densities were obtained from
different ingots. For all the tests, a cross head speed of 1 mm/min
(initial strain rate of 5  10  4 s  1) was used. Impact samples were
indented in the radial direction which is perpendicular to the
foaming direction. These tests were carried out at a velocity of
10 m/s on a Ceast Fractovis plus drop tower impact tester (ISO
6603) with a 20-mm hemi-spherical indenter. Foam density (ρf)
Fig. 1. Location and orientations of compression, and impact samples in the was calculated from weight and dimensions of individual test
sectioned cylindrical foam ingot with reference to foaming direction. specimens.

Fig. 2. Particle distribution in diluted composites at different SiC contents: (a) 15%, (b) 10%, and (c) 5%.
 N.V. Ravi Kumar et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 598 (2014) 343–349
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Diluted composite
During melting and mixing of the alloy and the composite, the
melt temperature was maintained below 700 1C to prevent any
undesirable reaction between Al and SiC [10]. The SiC distribution
in diluted composites is fairly uniform (Fig. 2) for all SiC contents,
although solidification induced particle segregation due to fine
Fig. 3. Longitudinal mid-sections of foam ingots (DU-1, DU-2, and DU-3). Arrow
indicates foaming direction.
Fig. 4. (a) Longitudinal and radial sections of middle portions of 10% SiC foams [(a) DU-4, and (b) DU-5] exhibiting uniform cell morphology. Arrow indicates foaming
direction.
345
SiCP size is evident (marked in Fig. 2b). Angular morphology of
SiCP could be seen in the magnified SEM micrograph (see inset of
Fig. 2b). During cooling of the stationary melt to the foaming
temperature, SiC particles tend to settle. Therefore, stirring was
initiated a few minutes prior to TiH2 addition so as to keep SiC
particles in suspension.
3.2. Foamability and structure
‘Foamability’, which indicates satisfactory expansion as well as
cell structure homogeneity, is good in all the experiments. These
foams have well-defined cell morphology without abnormal
coarse cells or big voids (Fig. 3). Much similar to our work on
Al–Si–Mg/SiC foams [7], a dense (unfoamed) portion was present
in the bottom region for all foams. It was observed that the dense
bottom portion of the foam ingot was completely devoid of SiC
particles.
Composite with 10% SiC exhibited higher net expansions as
compared to 5% and 15% SiC foams (Table 2). Lower expansion in
15% foam was observed with fine cells of about 0.8 mm which
resulted in very high density ( 0.9 g/cm3). It may be possible that
high viscosity of MMC melt prevented complete foaming. On the
other hand, lesser net expansion in 5% SiC foam was due to foam
decay {liquid foam collapse prior to solidification [7,8]}. This
collapse was evident in the middle part of the foam (Fig. 3) which
is the last solidifying area of the ingot. But for this, uniform cell
size morphology is observed in the major portion of foam ingots
(middle region) as shown in Figs. 3 and 4. Further structure,
density, and property evaluations (Fig. 1) were carried out in this
region. It is to be mentioned that density values reported in the
text are from the samples obtained from this region but not bulk
346 N.V. Ravi Kumar et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 598 (2014) 343–349

Fig. 5. Magnified structures of 5% and 10% foams exhibiting cell shape. For both the cases, mean cell size (d7 SD) is 1.5 7 0.5 mm. with their respective optical micrographs
of cell walls showing SiC microstructures. Arrow indicates foaming direction.

Fig. 6. Appearance of defects in low density (0.22 g/cm3) foam (mean d7

SD ¼ 2.9 71.4 mm). (a) Different types of defects such as punctured cells (A),
partially coupled cells (B), and missing cell (C). (b) Cell wall thinning and rupture.
density values of the complete foam ingot. In this analysis, 15% SiC
foam was omitted due to its high density.
Magnified pictures of 5% and 10% foams with their correspond-
ing cell wall microstructures are shown in Fig. 5. They exhibit well
defined cell size and cell wall connectivity. Certain degree of cell
compression in the foaming direction could be observed, although
this tendency is not apparent in the low density 10% foam as seen
from Figs. 4b and 6a. Foam collapse (lack of stability) observed in
5% foam could be related to such observations.
Fig. 7. Compression test data for Al–Si–Mg/SiCP foams. (a) Stress–strain plots for
different vol% SiC and (b) plateau stress as varied with density. Predicted data using
Eq. (1) is given for 10% SiC foam.
In foams, synthesized by melt based techniques, at the micro-
scopic level, foam stability is often postulated when inert particles
get attached (segregate) to gas–liquid interface [2,11–13]. How-
ever, SiC particles are distributed uniformly in CaCO3 blown foams
prepared by the melting route [14]. In the present foams too, any
preference towards gas/metal interface is not noticed and SiC
particles are distributed within the cell wall also (Fig. 5). The same
 N.V. Ravi Kumar et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 598 (2014) 343–349 347

trend was observed in our work on in-house synthesized and
foamed Al–Si–Mg/SiCP composites [7].
In Al–SiC foams produced by the powder metallurgy route, in
addition to the role of particles, Al oxides can be extremely helpful
in enhancing foam stability [15]. With MMC foams produced by
the melting route, any oxides generated in situ are likely to
increase foam stability [16,17]. In foaming of in-house prepared
Al–Si–Mg/SiCP composite [7], it was suggested that it is highly
probable that Mg and Al based oxides formed due to (i) high
composite synthesis temperatures (4700 1C), and (ii) excess Mg
(0.7 wt%) contribute to foam stability. As both the above factors are
absent in the present experiments, it is unlikely that these oxides
play any role in enhancing the foam stability. This factor combined
with the particle arrangement within cell wall (Fig. 5) makes the
liquid foam highly vulnerable to collapse. Therefore it appears that
though SiC particles alone can impart good foamability without
oxides, stability of such foams is limited. At a constant foaming
temperature (i.e. constant melt superheat), increase in SiC particle
content provides better foam stability due to enhanced viscosity as
is the case for 10% and 15% SiC foams.
Imperfections exist in these foams which appeared more
frequently in low density foam. As shown in Fig. 6a, defects such
as punctured cells (A) where a crack appears within the cell wall,
partially coupled cells (B) in which two or three cells combine to
form a bigger cell (coalescence), missing cell (C) exist. As liquid
foam expands, cell walls become thinner. While thinning, their
rupture leads to gradual disappearance of cell wall (defect B). It is
also possible that rupture events occurring while solidification [18]
can remain as imperfections (defect A). In the present case,
rupture took place when the cell walls were drawn to about
12 mm thick (Fig. 6b). As pointed out [13], this critical cell wall
thickness for rupture is approximately equal to particle size.
At constant SiC content (10%), the mean cell wall thickness
(7standard deviation) in the low density foam (ρf ¼ 0.22 g/cc) is
about 55.6 721 mm as compared to 69.7 7 41.6 mm in the medium
density (0.5 g/cc) foam (shown in Fig. 5). Decrease in foam density
was achieved through both cell coalescence [as seen from partially
coupled cells, (B)], and cell wall thinning.
3.3. Mechanical properties

As mentioned earlier, more compression tests were carried out

on 10% SiC foam at various densities. As for the 5% SiC foam, a few
samples were cut from the area which showed minimum cell
collapse (Fig. 5a). Typical compression stress–strain curves and
derived properties are given in Fig. 7. Properties such as initial
peak stress immediately after elastic deformation (smax), stress
minimum following smax (smin), plateau stress (spl), plateau strain
(εd) were deduced from compressive stress–strain plots. spl is
defined as the average stress over the strain range 0.1–0.4. εd was
determined as shown in Fig. 7a. Energy absorbed per unit volume
(E) was calculated up to plateau strain.
Al–alloy/SiCP foams fall into locally brittle foam category with
reference to their cell wall deformation behaviour [15,19–21].
Plateau stress data obtained for 5% and 10% SiC foams exhibit an
increase with foam density (Fig. 7a and b). With our limited data, it
can also be stated that spl seems to be insensitive to particle
content [20]. This shows that local variations of particle content
within cell walls are not important for properties but significant
with respect to foaming and foam stability. The predicted data for
spl is plotted in Fig. 7b which is given by Gibson and Ashby
equation [22] for brittle foams.
n o
spl ¼ ss 0:2ðφρr Þ3=2 þ ð1  φÞρr ð1Þ

In the above equation, ρr is the relative density (foam density/

Fig. 8. Impact load–deflection curves at a velocity of 10 m/s. (a) Typical plot
showing deduced parameters along with change in absorbed energy and (b) effect
of foam density on load–deflection curves for 10% SiC foam.
solid MMC density). ss is the yield strength of the cell wall material
(i.e. solid MMC, considered for 10% SiC here), which is taken as
175 MPa for remelted and diluted A356/SiC Duralcan MMC [23]. The
factor φ, being fraction solid occupied by cell edges, is equal to 1 (all
the material is in cell edges with no cell walls) for open cell foam and
less than 1 (some fraction of material is in cell walls) for closed cell
foam. In the present work, φ is assumed as 0.8 [15] for Al/SiC
composite foams. It can be seen that the experimental spl values are

Table 3
Impact test results.

Foam Peak force Deflection at Fmax, Energy to Puncture Puncture

density, g/cc (Fmax), N (lM), mm maxiumum force deflection (lP), mm energy, (EP), J
(EM), J

0.22 817 6.1 2.9 13.4 7.0

0.44 1528 6.3 6.8 11.5 12.4
0.51 2404 5.9 9.5 10.2 17.5
0.57 3003 6.5 12.5 10.8 23
348 N.V. Ravi Kumar et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 598 (2014) 343–349
Fig. 9. Impact tested foam (10% SiC foam; ρf ¼ 0.57 g/cc) and section across the perforated foam showing no cracks within the sample thickness.
Fig. 10. Energy absorbed per unit volume as varied with foam density during
compression and impact testing.
close to the predicted data for closed cell foams. For low density
foams, the data lies close to the values predicted for open cell foams.
This may be due to the presence of defects (Fig. 6). As pointed [24],
defects such as partially coupled cells (B), and missing cells (C) can
significantly reduce plateau stress.
Impact tests were carried out on 10% SiC foam samples. The
response was recorded in terms of load, time, velocity, and
displacement. The absorbed energy by the sample is given by
the area under the force–displacement curve. A typical force/
energy–deflection plot is shown in Fig. 8a. Initial serrations in
force–deflection curve may be due to inertial effects (ASTM D
3763). Curves obtained at different foam densities (for 10% SiC
foam) are given in Fig. 8b. Properties such as peak force (Fmax),
deflection at Fmax (lM), puncture deflection (lP), energy expended
up to Fmax (EM), energy expended up to lP (puncture energy, EP)
were obtained from these curves (Table 3). The peak force, and
puncture energy increases with foam density. This is expected as
the Fmax tends to increase with shear modulus of the material.
Fig. 9 shows front and rear side of a tested sample. Some
damage around the perforation on the rear side is seen. This may
be due to flexural mode of loading. Except for the lowest density
sample, considering the average cell size of 1.4 mm, there are
about 7 cells in the thickness direction (10 mm). At the start, the
load increases with displacement linearly up to an initial peak
load, which represents the resistance of foam cells to penetration.
The sharp loss of load with increasing displacement indicates first
crack or damage occurrence in the sample. In the present work,
the impact curves show 2 or 3 distinct peaks before reaching the
highest peak force occurring at a displacement of  6 mm
(Table 3). This is approximately equal to the thickness of the bands
of cells that get crushed. While this occurs, the rest of the
specimen is intact (Fig. 9). Further tests with controlled penetra-
tion (low velocities) are needed to study the damage induced in
the material.
Assuming compressive loads throughout the perforation,
energy absorbed per unit volume was calculated by dividing the
puncture energy with the volume of material that was perforated
(punch diameter of 20 mm and sample thickness of 10 mm).
Fig. 10 compares the energy absorbed per unit volume for both
compression and impact tests as a function of density. Despite
their varied strain rates (5  10  4 versus 103 s  1), there is not
much difference in the absorbed energy values between compres-
sion and impact tests.
4. Conclusions
For different SiC contents, good quality TiH2 blown foams were
obtained by melt based technique from remelted and diluted
Al alloy/SiCP composite. For the mean SiCP size of 8 mm, high
expansions with uniform cell morphology could be obtained at
and below 10 vol% SiC. While presence of SiC alone can lead to
good expansions, these foams are vulnerable to foam collapse. This
liquid foam stability (until solidification) may be correlated to
in situ oxides generated during foam manufacturing. Compressive
plateau strength is only dependent on foam density but not
influenced by SiC content. On account of structural imperfections
in low density foams, the plateau strength for low density foams is
inferior to predicted strength. Energy absorption doesn’t seem to
be sensitive to the loading rate within six orders of magnitude.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Dr. Michel Suéry, CNRS Professor and
Research Manager at Institut National Poltechnique de Grenoble,
 N.V. Ravi Kumar et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 598 (2014) 343–349
France for kindly giving us the Duralcan composite for experi-
mentation, and Dr. Ranjit Bauri of Indian Institute of Technology
Madras, Chennai, India for conducting the impact tests. Financial
grant from Defence Research and Development Organisation is
gratefully acknowledged.
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