12. Conclusion

The industrial development of metal foams, which is very real and advanced in fields such as the manufacture of accumulator batteries and medical prostheses, has not yet reached maturity.

This is not due to the manufacturing processes for metal foams, which are now fairly well mastered and guarantee repeatable products. Rather, it's due to a lack of knowledge about this new product, and to technical and economic competition between the metal foams emerging in the industrial world, and the existing solutions, which are often more conventional, but robust and validated.

Expanding the industrial development of metal foams will therefore first require designers to integrate this new material, in the same way as honeycomb structures, metal fabrics and so on. It is then likely that production costs for metal foams will fall significantly as soon...