Aluminum foams have become very attractive materials due to their unique properties that make them suitable for applications in the automotive industry (as absorber of mechanical impacts and acoustic noise), the aerospace, construction, machinery and shipbuilding industry (as light structural components).
Research into the development of aluminum foams has been extensively made in recent years. In consequence, the number of different types of aluminum foams has experienced a considerably growth. The commercial methods to produce aluminum foams rely on the pouring of a molten mixing of aluminum or alloys and a foaming agent into a casting mold. The production of pieces of big volume by some of these methods shows limitations of mechanical performance that are associated to a low control of geometry and distribution of pore size in the bulk.
The common drawbacks of these methods motivate us to explore the application of laser cladding technique to produce foams. The expected benefits of this technique are the reduction of the manufacturing steps to produce a three dimensional foam bulk and the improvement of the distribution and the size of the pores in the volume. Preliminary results of aluminum foams produced by a high diode power laser via the powder blowing technique will be presented.