Over the past few years a number of low cost metallic foams havebeen produced and used as the core of sandwich panels and net shaped parts. Themain aim is to develop lightweight structures which are stiff, strong, able to absorblarge amount of energy and cheap for application in the transport and constructionindustries. For example, the firewall between the engine and passenger compartmentof an automobile must have adequate mechanical strength, good energy and soundabsorbing properties, and adequate fire retardance. Metal foams provide all of thesefeatures, and are under serious consideration for this applications by a number of au-tomobile manufacturers (e.g., BMW and Audi). Additional specialized applicationsfor foam-cored sandwich panels range from heat sinks for electronic devices to crashbarriers for automobiles, from the construction panels in lifts on aircraft carriers tothe luggage containers of aircraft, from sound proofing walls along railway tracks andhighways to acoustic absorbers in lean premixed combustion chambers. But thereis a problem. Before metallic foams can find a widespread application, their basicproperties must be measured, and ideally modeled as a function of microstructuraldetails, in order to be included in a design. This work aims at reviewing the recentprogress and presenting some new results on fundamental research regarding the mi-cromechanical origins of the mechanical, thermal, and acoustic properties of metallicfoams.
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