Metallic foams. Industrial applications

Metal foams belong to the group of cellular materials, and thus share some of their functional applications. Numerous press articles regularly present these products as innovative and promising, often citing their good physical characteristics despite their remarkable lightness.

In reality, metal foams have been around for almost a century, but are not yet very well developed industrially, mainly because of their relatively high cost and the long-standing imperfect mastery of their manufacturing processes. These processes have undergone considerable evolution and are now mature, and can now claim overall control over the structures of the metal foams produced. As a result, the potential applications for these attractive materials are many and varied.

The article begins with an overview of the current situation and the progress of industrial developments in metallic foams. It also looks at the major technical and economic issues involved in industrial metal foams, and suggests orders of magnitude in terms of cost.

Next, the main fields in which metal foams are currently deployed or could potentially be used (crash, ballistic, thermal or electrical exchange, sound/vibration insulation, design, medical) are described, with a presentation of the advantages of using these products compared with existing solutions. For each application, the industrial fields concerned are specified, and examples of prototypes and industrial realizations are given.