Fabrication and Experimental Investigation on Deformation Behaviour of AlSi10Mg Foam-Filled Mild Steel Tubes

Aluminium (Al) alloy foam is an engineering material which has emerged in the automobile sector where crash energy absorption, vibration and sound damping and weight reduction are required. Al-alloy foam is a lightweight material providing high strength and stiffness at relatively low density. The paper aims to study the innovative approach of manufacturing AlSi10Mg foam. The low-density and high-strength Al-alloy foam (AlSi10Mg) is fabricated using the melt route process resulting in a density of 0.70-0.90 g/cm(3). After that, square mild steel thin-walled empty tubes and Al-alloy foam-filled mild steel tubes are tested to study enhanced energy absorption characteristics. The tests are carried out on universal testing machine with strain rate 10/s. Al-alloy foam, AlSi10Mg, is assessed macroscopically and microscopically using field emission scanning electron microscope and energy-dispersive X-ray analysis. The experimental results indicate that foam-filled tubes feature more energy absorption than empty tubes at strain rate 10/s.