Mold-Filling Ability of Aluminum Alloy Melt during the Two-Step Foaming Process

For the two-step foaming method, one of the most cost-effective ways to fabricate three-dimensional shaped aluminum alloy foams with dense outer surface skin, it is crucial to describe and predict the mold-filling behavior of the shaped aluminum alloy foams with a favorable pore-distribution accurately. In this paper, a mold-filling model for semi-solid aluminum alloy foams was initially established and subsequently employed to predict the filling height, which represents the mold-filling ability of semi-solid aluminum alloy foams in a specially designed tube-like mold. Our results indicate that the proposed model can be applied to characterize the mold-filling property of aluminum alloy melts in a quantitative manner. Theoretically, our findings actually provide a guideline for mass-production of the shaped aluminum alloy foams by using the two-step foaming process.