Fabrication of Lotus-type Porous Copper by Centrifugal Casting

초록

Lotus-type porous metals have been gathered much attention because of their unique pore morphology, which is long and cylindrical, compared to conventional porous and foamed metals with spherical pores. Mold casting, continuous zone melting technique and continuous casting are known to be conventional fabrication methods for these metals. These fabrication methods have several drawback so far, that are the lack of economic feasibility and safety for the use of the metals at the industrial fields because high pressurized hydrogen gas is required as a pore former. In this study, lotus-type porous copper was fabricated by centrifugal casting technique as a new method to improve the economic feasibility and safety for the fabrication. In this method, centrifugal force was introduced to replace high-pressure hydrogen gas in the conventional methods. Lotus-type porous copper was fabricated by centrifugal casting at a various rotational velocity under a hydrogen gas pressure of 0.1 MPa. The results showed that porosity and average pore diameter were decreased with increasing rotational velocity. Furthermore, an equation for the prediction of porosity related to the rotational velocity and radius was derived in this study. As a result, calculated value and experimental value were in good agreement with the equation.