Primary investigation on sound absorption performance of highly porous titanium foams

• A novel sort of high porosity titanium foam with spherical pores was successfully prepared.
• This cellular titanium foam showed a quite excellent performance of sound absorption.
• The reticular product could also present a good sound absorption at the resonant frequency.

A novel sort of cellular titanium foam, whose total porosity was achieved as high as 86%–90% and main pores were spherically millimeter-scaled, was recently prepared successfully by an improved foaming method of melting the metallic powder. This titanium foam showed a good performance of sound absorption, and its sound absorption coefficient could be more than 0.6 in the sound-wave frequency range of 3150–6300 Hz and even exceed 0.9 at the resonance frequency. The main mechanism of sound absorption for this foam should be of interference silencing due to the surface reflection when the sound wave frequency is lower than about 4250 Hz, and the viscous dissipation when the frequency is higher than about 4250 Hz. A reticular product with millimeter-scaled pore size and about 90% porosity was also made by means of slurry-immersed sintering, and the resultant titanium foam might display an effect for sound absorption, but on the whole, its absorption was evidently inferior to that of the cellular product. The corresponding sound absorption coefficient could not be above 0.2 until sound-wave frequency is higher than 3150 Hz, keeping a relatively low value except for resonance occasion only, on which it could reach up to around 0.9 at about 4000 Hz.

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