Modeling of Transport Phenomena in Metal Foaming

B. Chinè[1], M. Monno[2]
[1]Laboratorio MUSP Piacenza, Italy; ITCR, Esc. Ciencia e Ing. Materiales, Cartago, Costa Rica
[2]Laboratorio MUSP, Piacenza, Italy; Politecnico di Milano, Dip. Meccanica, Milano, Italy
Published in 2013

Metal foams are interesting materials with many potential applications in engineering. Foamed metals or alloys include gas voids in the material structure with the real possibility to modify ad hoc their physical properties. Following our previous efforts aimed to simulate and study the foaming process of a metal, we propose in this work a model which considers heat and mass transfer phenomena, coupled to the growth and movement of hydrogen gas bubbles in liquid aluminium. The aim of the work is to simulate the expansion of a metal foam in a horizontal 2D mold, by taking more mechanisms into account. The numerical results of the simulation show that the computational model, based on a level set technique for capturing the phase interface, can be effective.