Corrosion Behaviour of Closed Cell Magnesium Foam with Rare Earth Elements by Powder Metallurgy Process

A cellular structure made up of solid metal is significantly termed as Metal Foam. It consists of gas-filled pores in large volumes. These gas-filled pores are sometimes closely packed termed to be closed-cell foam and sometimes it is a network with interconnected termed to be open cell foam. The closed-cell foam is mainly contributed to weight saving and impact-absorbing structural application in automotive vehicles. The open-cell foam is contributed to vibration and sound absorption and catalysis to withstand high temperature for heat exchanger. The attractive method for fabricating metallic foam production is Powder metallurgy because it allows for the processing of a wide range of integral sandwich structures. This work explains the fabrication of Magnesium reinforced with Aluminum, copper, and zinc with yttrium metal foam with titanium hydride as foaming agents and calcium stearate as a binding agent. The pellets are prepared by the powder metallurgy method at the dimension of 20mm diameter and 16mm thickness. The sintered samples are tested for the characteristics of corrosion by using a salt spray test. The sample of the first series which has the composition of Mg-70% Al-30% gave the best result in corrosion resistance results in mpy unit but in mm/yr. samples 1.3 and 2.1 which has the composition of Mg-70% Al-30% and Mg-50% Al-25% Cu-25% respectively gave the best corrosion resistance results in mm/yr.