Materials and Design 74 (2015) 3643

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Materials and Design

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matdes

Fabrication and characterization of closed-cell magnesium-based

composite foams
Xingchuan Xia a,b,, Junlong Feng a, Jian Ding a, Kaihong Song a, Xiaowei Chen a, Weimin Zhao a, Bo Liao a,
Boyoung Hur c
a
b
c

School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300130, China
Key Lab for Micro and Nano-Scale Boron Nitride Materials of Hebei Province, China
School of Nano Advanced Materials Science and Engineering, Gyeongsang National University of South Korea, Republic of Korea

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 7 November 2014
Revised 26 February 2015
Accepted 28 February 2015
Available online 3 March 2015
Keywords:
Porous material
Metallic composite
Compressive property
Metal matrix syntactic foam

a b s t r a c t
Closed-cell AZ31 magnesium alloy foams with different percentages of hollow ceramic microspheres
(CMs) are synthesized using modied melt foaming method. The distribution of CMs is investigated
and also the effect of CMs on the foaming behaviors (specically for porosity and pore size) and
quasi-static compressive behaviors of Mg-based composite foams are characterized. The results show
that CMs distribute in cell walls homogeneously and most of them are penetrated by magnesium alloy
melt. In addition, the mean pore size declines with the increase of CMs percentage. Moreover, the overall
porosity of the foams increases rst and then decreases with the increase of CMs content, and the variation tendency is more obvious when the foaming temperature is lower (namely 680 C). Besides, proper
percentage of CMs changes the compression fracture mode of the foams from brittleness to ductility.
OM/SEM/EDS/XRD detections and nite element analysis are applied to explain the reasons.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Metal matrix syntactic foam (MMSF) is a kind of special composite that consists of a metal matrix and a set of hollow, spherical
particles [1]. It has been conrmed that MMSF possesses excellent
mechanical properties compared with traditional metal foams, e.g.
high specic strength and stiffness, good energy absorption capacity, etc. [14]. For these reasons, MMSF has been widely used in
automotive, aerospace, military vehicles and other industrial elds
[5]. Up to now, MMSF is mainly prepared by melt inltration technique, resulting in conned product dimensions and much lower
porosity than foams prepared by melt foaming method. It is
because CMs are mainly used as pore generation agent or thickening agent when synthesizing MMSF [2]. Generally speaking, it is
believed that the metal matrix of MMSF can be made of aluminum,
steel, titanium or magnesium alloys. However, to our best knowledge, most of the researches have focused on aluminum or aluminum alloy matrix. Besides, most of the researches about
magnesium metal foams are about traditional foams (without
spherical particles) and it has been improved that magnesium

Corresponding author at: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hebei

University of Technology, Tianjin 300130, China.
E-mail address: xc_xia@hebut.edu.cn (X. Xia).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2015.02.029
0261-3069/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

metal foams have the potential to serve as structural material for

regular light-weight applications. Wang et al. investigated the processing of magnesium foams fabricated by an inltration technology. In addition, the pore structures and mechanical
properties of space holder particles as well as the resultant foam
were also characterized. The results showed that the foams exhibited usual stressstrain behaviors and nearly isotropic properties.
Meanwhile, the yield strength of the foams increased with the
decrease of sample porosity and the relative mechanical properties
of foams were mostly dependent on their relative densities [6].
Osorio-Hernndez et al. prepared open-cell Mg foams by replication process and the mechanical properties of the foams were
investigated. The results showed that increasing the pore size,
the relative density decreased, while the porosity increased, registering a minimum relative density of 0.22. Specimens with smaller
pore size and lower percent porosity showed higher mechanical
properties [7]. Luo et al. investigated the effect of technological
parameters on preparation of Mg-based foams by melt foaming
method using SiC and MgCO3 as thickening agent and foaming
agent, respectively. The results showed that technological parameters may affect the preparation of the foams, resulting in the
changes of the products in apparent density, porosity and structural uniformity. In addition, light weight Mg-based foams with
homogeneous pores could be obtained by suitable combination

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X. Xia et al. / Materials and Design 74 (2015) 3643

of the technological parameters [8]. Zhang et al. produced a novel

porous Mg scaffold with three-dimensional (3D) interconnected
pores by the ber deposition hot pressing technology and the
effects of porosities on the microstructure and mechanical properties of the porous Mg were investigated. The results showed that
the measured Youngs modulus and compressive strength of the
Mg scaffold were ranged in 0.100.37 GPa, and 11.130.3 MPa,
respectively [9]. Chen et al. investigated the inuences of strain
rate, cell size, relative density and the content of SiC on energy
absorption characteristics of closed-cell Mg alloy foam by dynamic
compression experiments. The results showed that cell size
had signicant effect on energy absorption characteristics.
Additionally, the strain rate effect was more sensitive to the foams
with larger cell size and the inuence of relative density on energy
absorption characteristics was not signicant [10]. In previous
research, the present authors investigated the corrosion behavior
and mechanical properties of closed-cell Mg alloy foams [11,12].
It can be seen that magnesium matrix has seldom been involved
in for the MMSF and further research is needed. In this paper, a
new modied melt foaming method is developed to prepare magnesium matrix composite foams with different percentages of CMs.
Meanwhile, the effect of CMs on the foaming behaviors and the
quasi-static compressive properties are investigated. A simple 3D
porous model is established and numerical simulation is applied
to investigate the effect of pore size uniformity on the deformation
mode of closed-cell AZ31 magnesium syntactic foams.

machining. Secondly, CMs are divided into different volumes averagely. Thirdly, magnesium sheets and CMs are stacked layer by layer in a mild steel crucible. In order to ensure the CMs uniform
distributions on each magnesium sheet, a homemade wooden
shovel is used. Meanwhile, a tube clamp is applied to guarantee
the integrity of the CMs when put another magnesium sheet on
the CMs layer. At last, the layered composite materials with the
mild steel crucible are heated together to a xed temperature.
Commercial AZ31 magnesium alloy is used as matrix, 1.5 wt.%
commercial available calcium granules (with diameters of
12.5 mm) and 2.0 wt.% CaCO3 powder (analytically pure) are
selected as thickening and foaming agents, respectively. SF6 and
CO2 gas mixture is used to protect the melt from being ignited or
oxidized. For the details of melt foaming method please refer to
[12] and detailed parameters about AZ31 magnesium alloy and
the CMs are shown in Tables 1 and 2, respectively. For comparison,
two types of foams with foaming temperature of 680 C and 720 C
are prepared, respectively. It should be noted that for each type of
foams the thickening temperature is identical with the foaming
temperature. In addition, all of the other parameters remain
unchanged (with the stirring speeds of 500 and 1000 rpm and
stirring duration of 8 min and 40 s for thickening and foaming
stages, respectively) except for the percentage of CMs (0, 2, 4, 8,
10 and 20 Vol.%, hereinafter refer to Vol.%). The overall porosity
is measured by Archimedes principle and pore size is obtained
by a scanning method [14].

2. Experimental details

2.2. Microstructure observation

2.1. Specimens preparation

Representative metallographic preparation process is applied to

prepare specimens for metallographic characterization. Namely,
specimens are ground through successive grades of silicon carbide
abrasive papers up to 2000 grit and polished using 0.25 lm diamond polishing paste, then ultrasonic cleaned using alcohol and
dried by cold owing air. Microstructure and pore morphology
are obtained by a scanning electron microscope (SEM, Hitachi
S4800) equipped with energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer
(EDS). Phase composition is identied by X-ray diffraction (XRD,
SmartLab, Rigaku) with Cu Ka radiation.

Through previous research, it is conrmed that hollow ceramic

microspheres (CMs) are hard to be introduced into magnesium
alloy melt homogenously by traditional adding method, like adding thickening or foaming agents to magnesium alloy melt. It is
mainly because of the reaction of SiO2, magnesium melt (Eq. (1)
[13]) and O2 (which is brought in along with the addition of CMs
despite the presence of protective gas and the reasons will be discussed later), resulting in the burning, coking and reunion of CMs.
At last, CMs adhere to melt surface and hard to be separated
through mechanical stirring.

4Mg SiO2 ! Mg2 Si 2MgO

In this paper the adding method of CMs and magnesium matrix

is modied (as shown in Fig. 1a). Firstly, AZ31 magnesium ingot is
cut into sheets with a thickness of 510 mm by electro-discharging

(a)

2.3. Compression test

Specimens for compression test are cut into 25  25  25 mm
(length  width  thickness) by electro-discharging machining to
avoid size effect. Uni-axial compression tests (according to GB/T
7314-2005 materials compression test standard) are performed

(b)

1cm

1cm

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of adding CMs and magnesium alloy matrix (a); cross section morphology (b) of CMs-containing foam under foaming temperature of 680 C and
CMs percentage of 20%.

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X. Xia et al. / Materials and Design 74 (2015) 3643

Table 1
Composition of AZ31 (wt.%).
AL

Zn

Mn

Si

Fe

Cu

Ni

Mg

2.7852

0.7925

0.5635

0.0032

0.0002

0.0003

0.0004

Bal

by using SUNS Electron Universal Material Testing Machine, with a

maximum load of 300 kN. All tests are performed under displacement control, with a displacement rate of 1.5 mm/min (with initial
strain rate of 0.001/s) at room temperature. Vaseline is used to
minimize the friction between specimen and plates. Load and displacement are recorded using a data acquisition unit and a personal computer. All engineering stresses and engineering strains used
in this paper are deduced from the recorded loaddisplacement
data. For each parameter two specimens are compressed and the
average data are used. Extrapolation method is used to determine
the densication strain [15].

Pore
Fig. 2. Existence forms of CMs in cell walls.

3. Results
3.1. Specimen structure
Fig. 1b shows the cross-section morphology of the composite
foams with 20% CMs under the foaming temperature of 680 C. It
can be seen that the pore structure is homogeneous and the pores
are spherical and separated. Meanwhile, no burning, coking or
reunion of CMs is observed during the whole preparation process.
SEM observation (as shown in Fig. 2) is applied on the cell walls to
conrm the existence forms of CMs. It is clear that CMs distribute
in the cell walls uniformly and most of them maintain their original morphology [16], free of being smashed during the stirring process. In addition, more than 95% (numbers) of CMs are penetrated
by magnesium melt. The above mentioned results mean that the
modied melt foaming method can produce magnesium matrix
composite foams successfully.
3.2. Foaming behaviors of foams with CMs
In order to understand the effect of CMs on the foaming behavior
of composite foams, the variation trends of pore size and porosity
distributions are studied. Figs. 3 and 4 show the variation tendencies (here, 680-0 in the block diagram means the foaming temperature is 680 C and the CMs content is 0% and so on) of pore
size under the foaming temperature of 680 and 720 C, respectively.
With foaming temperature of 680 C (as shown in Fig. 3), it is clear
that all of the pores are distributed between 0.5 and 4 mm while
mainly between 1 and 3 mm for the foams without CMs.
However, for the CMs-containing foams, the pores mainly distribute
between 0.5 and 2 mm and the proportion of these pores
(0.52 mm) goes higher along with the increase of CMs percentage.
Meanwhile, pores with the diameter of 34 mm are almost disappeared. Similar trend happens to the foams under the foaming
temperature of 720 C (as shown in Fig. 4), though the pore size
distribution range (16 mm) and the main distribution range
(14 mm) are slightly different from the foams under the foaming
temperature of 680 C. The mentioned results above mean that
the pore sizes of the composite foams tend to be smaller and more
homogeneous with the addition of CMs.

Fig. 3. Pore sizes distribution of composite foams under foaming temperature of

680 C with CMs percentages of 0%, 2%, 4%, 8%, 10% and 20%.

Fig. 4. Pore sizes distribution of composite foams under foaming temperature of

720 C with CMs percentages of 0%, 2%, 4%, 8%, 10% and 20%.

Table 2
Parameters of CMs.
Stacking density (g/cm3)

Size range (lm)

Wall thickness (lm)

0.42

45150

7.5 0.8

Fig. 5a and b shows the effect of CMs on the overall porosity of

the composite foams with foaming temperatures of 680 and
720 C, respectively. The red solid line shows the mean value of

X. Xia et al. / Materials and Design 74 (2015) 3643

39

Fig. 5. Effect of CMs on the porosity of foams with foaming temperatures of 680 C (a) and 720 C (b), it should be noted that the lines are only used to describe the trend.

the porosities obtained from the individual measurements. It is

clear that in both cases the mean porosity increases rst and then
decreases with the increase of CMs percentage. On the whole, the
porosity is higher and the variation tendency is more moderate for
foams with foaming temperature of 720 C. In addition, the porosity attains high level with CMs percentage of 28% under foaming
temperature of 680 C. While it requires the CMs percentage to be
between 8% and 15% under foaming temperature of 720 C.
3.3. Engineering stressengineering strain curves

strain and some uctuation or work hardening occurs on some

curves. At last, a densication stage where the stress increases
sharply with the strain increasing slightly. It should be noted that
in the plateau deformation stage serrations appear on some of the
curves, meaning brittle fracture behaviors. While, for the others
the curves are smooth, meaning ductile fracture behaviors. It is
clear that that foams without CMs show typical brittle fracture
behaviors. Meanwhile, the uctuation range for the foams with
CMs of 2% is much smaller compared with foams without CMs.
Continue to increase the content of CMs, namely 4% and 8%, the
curves in the plateau deformation stage become very smooth
(meaning ductile fracture behavior). While, if more CMs (10% and
20%) present in the composite foams, the serrations appear again,
implying the brittle fracture behaviors. As shown in Fig. 7, similar
results can be observed when the thickening and foaming temperature is 720 C. All of the above mentioned results mean that
with proper addition of CMs the deformation behavior of the
closed-cell Mg-base foams changed from brittle fracture to ductile
fracture behaviors and if excessive CMs are contained the deformation mode returns to brittle fracture again and the reasons will be
discussed later.

Up to now, metal foams are mainly used in energy absorption

elds and in these elds most of the components experience compressive deformation process. Thus, in the present paper,
quasi-static compression test is applied to investigate the deformation process of the CMs-containing foams. Fig. 6 shows the engineering stressengineering strain curves of the foams with
different percentages of CMs and different porosities (mainly
between 53% and 67%), for each percentage of foams two specimens are compressed and showed. Here, 8-0-59% in the block diagram means the specimen with the foaming temperature is 680 C
and the CMs content is 0% and porosity of 59% and so on. It is clear
that in all cases the curves show typical three deformation stages
as most of metal foams: First, a linear stage where stress increases
almost linearly with the increase of strain until the rst peak stress
(dened as yield strength). Then, a plateau deformation stage
where stress maintains within a certain level with the increase of

Melt foaming method with simple prepare process and high

economical efciency is the most popular way to produce
closed-cell metal foams with large dimensions and uniform

Fig. 6. Quasi-static compressive engineering stressengineering strain curves of the

foams with different percentages of CMs under the foaming temperature of 680 C.

Fig. 7. Quasi-static compressive engineering stressengineering strain curves of the

foams with different percentages of CMs under the foaming temperature of 720 C.

4. Discussion

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X. Xia et al. / Materials and Design 74 (2015) 3643

structure, specially for traditional aluminum and magnesium

foams. In previous research CMs was introduced into the
closed-cell aluminum foam with melt foaming method to produce
aluminum composite foams [16,17]. CMs were added with aluminum foil coated and it was conrmed that by this way
CMs-containing aluminum foam can be successfully obtained with
the CMs homogeneously distributed in the foams. As for
CMs-containing magnesium composite foams, during the initial
stage of the experiments similar adding method is used, unlike
the aluminum composite foams, serious burning, coking and
reunion of CMs is observed. This is mainly due to excess oxygen
is involved onto the melt surface and chemical reaction occurs
between Mg, SiO2 and O2. This is owing to that when CMs are
added with aluminum foil coated, a lot of space will exist among
the CMs when only one kind of CMs is used [18], resulting in
involving air (O2) to the crucible. Meanwhile, unlike the thickening
agent (Ca) and foaming agent (CaCO3), the stacking density of CMs
is very low (as shown in Table 2). When the aluminum foil coated
CMs are added longer time is need to bring the CMs into the slurry,
compared with the foaming agent. Thus, due to the protective
effect of aluminum foil O2 will have enough time to go down to
the melt surface and chemical reaction will occur, resulting in
the burning, coking and reunion of CMs on the melt surface. CMs
without aluminum foil protect are also introduce into the melt
and more serious burning appeared due to the involvement of
gas ow. It should be noted that all the experiments are conducted
under the protection of SF6 and CO2 gas mixture. In this paper, the
adding method of AZ31 Mg alloy and CMs is modied as described
in Section 2.1 and in this way the O2 involved in the CMs can be

Fig. 8. Phase compositions of foams with different percentages of CMs under the
foaming temperature of 680 C.

(a)

drove away before magnesium alloy melting due to the rising temperature and the protection gas mixture. Meanwhile, with the temperature increasing the reaction (Eq. (1)) will occur (which will be
conrmed later) in situ, resulting in the permeation of the CMs and
high bonding strength between magnesium alloy and CMs. In addition, with the temperature increasing CMs can be heated evenly to
avoid being broken due to the unevenly local heating. Besides, the
reaction will restrict the oatation of the CMs, resulting in
homogenous distribution of CMs in the composite foams.
According to the binary phase diagram of MgSi system [19], in
the present experiment the phase composition of the as-cast foam
consists of primary Mg2Si and eutectic Mg2Si + halphai-Mg phases.
XRD detections are applied and the results are shown in Fig. 8. The
main difference between the CMs-containing specimens and the
specimen without CMs is the appearance of Mg2Si phase on the
former. Meanwhile, the intensity of the MgO is increasing with
the increase of CMs percentage. The above mentioned results mean
the reaction between Mg and SiO2 (which is the main composition
of CMs) occurred during the preparation process [20]. It is known
that the intermetallic compound of Mg2Si exhibits an excellent
combination of superior properties, such as high melting temperature (1085 C), low density (1.99  103 kg/m3), high hardness,
low thermal expansion coefcient and reasonably high elastic
modulus [21]. All these properties mean that under the present
conditions Mg2Si phase can stably exist in the composite foams
which is benecial to the macro structures and mechanical properties of foams. Furthermore, the Mg2Si phase is exceptionally stable
and therefore could effectively impede grain boundary sliding at
elevated temperatures, which is benecial to mechanical properties of the composite foams [21]. It has been conrmed in
Section 3.2 that with the addition of CMs the pore size becomes
smaller and the uniformity of the pores increased as shown in
Figs. 3 and 4. This is mainly due to the existence of Mg2Si phase.
As ne Mg2Si particles can act as nucleation particles of the
bubbles just as calcium particles [22]. Therefore, when there are
more nucleation particles in the melt, the nascent bubbles have
more choices to attach and more pores will generate, which will
improve the homogeneity of the pores. Meanwhile, the total
volume of the gas is assumed to be constant as the foaming agent
percentage remains unchanged (2 wt.%) for all foams. Thus, the
CMs-containing foams possess much smaller pore sizes and the
pore size decreases with the increase of CMs percentage. In addition, as the existence of Mg2Si phases, the viscosity of the magnesium melt increases further besides the effect of calcium particles
(thickening agent). As it is known, viscosity is signicant for metal
foams preparation [23]. Thus, when the foaming temperature is
lower (680 C) the original viscosity of the melt is higher and a
small quantity of CMs (Mg2Si particles) can make the viscosity
appropriate to produce higher porosity foams. When the foaming
temperature is higher (720 C) more CMs (Mg2Si particles) are
needed. While, excessive CMs (Mg2Si particles) will make the melt

(b)

Fig. 9. Blocky Mg2Si phase in synthetic foams with CMs percentages of 10% (a) and 20% (b) under foaming temperature of 680 C.

X. Xia et al. / Materials and Design 74 (2015) 3643

1mm

D1

D2

Compression direction

(a)

41

(b)

Fig. 10. Schematic model (a) and meshing result (b) of a unit cell of closed-cell foam.

Fig. 11. Simulation results of models with local pore diameters of 2 mm (a), 3 mm (b) and 4 mm (c).

viscosity too high and the bubbles need more driving force to grow
up [22]. However, during the preparation process, the parameters
remain unchanged as described above and no extra driving force
is available, resulting in smaller pore size. Meanwhile, the pores
are hard to grow up, leading to the decrease of entire porosity
(as shown in Fig. 5).
As shown in Figs. 6 and 7, the addition of CMs has important
effect on the compressive deformation behavior of the composite
foams, namely proper percentages of CMs change the deformation
mode form brittleness to ductility. In previous research Mukai et al.
investigated the dynamic compressive behaviors of open-cell AZ91
magnesium alloy foam and the results showed that foams under
different dynamic strain rate present typical brittle fracture behavior [24]. Yang et al. and Xu et al. studied compressive properties
the closed-cell commercial pure Mg foams with different porosities
and the closed-cell AZ91 magnesium alloy foams with different
pore sizes, respectively. Both of the results showed typical brittle
fracture behaviors [25,26]. Meanwhile, in our previous research
closed-cell AZ31 magnesium alloy foams (prepared by the identical
method described above) both under as-cast and heat treatment

conditions showed apparent brittleness [12,27,28]. In general, the

deformation mode depends on the properties of base materials
and the pore structures of foams [22]. Thus, in this experiment
proper addition of CMs should have changed the properties of basic
materials or the pore structure of the composite foams. It can be
found from Fig. 2 that the CMs distribute homogeneously in the
Mg alloy matrix and are almost completely lled by Mg alloy. A
small part of the CMs are fractured at the thinnest regions or concentrating porosities on their walls because of the difference of
thermal expansion coefcients between CMs particles and matrix
alloy and the reaction between Mg and SiO2 (Eq. (1)). It is accessible that the content of Si element (or Mg2Si phase) increases with
the increase of CMs percentage. During SEM observation the distribution of Mg2Si phase in the foams with CMs of 2%, 4% and 8% is
homogeneous on the entire cross-section. While, for the other
two specimens (especially for the CMs percentage of 20%), the segregation of Si element is observed and the results are shown in
Fig. 9. Compared with the other foams some darker and bulky
regions (as the black arrows indicated) embed in the matrix especially around CMs, which has been conrmed to be coarse Mg2Si

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X. Xia et al. / Materials and Design 74 (2015) 3643

[29]. According to the statistical results it is conrmed that CMs

has an important effect on the pore size distributions of the composite foams (as shown in Figs. 3 and 4), which should also have
a signicant effect on the compressive behaviors of the foams. To
clearly show the inuence, a simple nite element analysis (FEM)
model is built to investigate the inuence of local larger pore on
the compressive deformation behavior of the synthetic foams.
Fig. 10a shows the plan sketch of the unit model with the local
larger pore diameter of D1 = 4 mm. To simplify the calculation process all the other surrounding pores diameters are set as D2 = 2 mm
and the cell wall thickness (distance between the larger pore and
the surrounding pore) is assumed as 1 mm as shown in Fig. 10a.
UG and Deform 3D software are applied to build up the models
and simulate the quasi-static compression test at room temperature (20 C) respectively, using AZ31 Mg alloy as raw material
and with compression speed of 1.5 mm/min. Fig. 10b shows the
line graph of the unit model after being meshed. In the present
paper, the evolution of overall stress distribution on the unit model
under the same amount of deformation is used to discuss the effect
of local larger pore on the deformation behavior of the foams.
Fig 11ac shows the overall stress distribution under the identical
amount of deformation for the local larger pore sizes of D2 = 2, 3
and 4 mm, respectively. It is clear that the effective stress on the
foams with larger local pore size is more concentrated and
propagated outward. Meanwhile, stress concentration appears on
the larger pore (Fig. 11c), meaning under the identical amount of
deformation the location with larger pore size will rst fracture.
Thus, the foams with larger pore size distribution ranges (as shown
in Figs. 3 and 4) will possess reduced fracture consistency and
obvious uctuation on the engineering stressengineering strain
curves (as shown in Figs. 6 and 7). Also, it has been conrmed that
the magnesium matrix composite with small particle size of Mg2Si
dispersoid possesses optimal combination of ultimate tensile
strength and elongation due to the pinning effect of the ne
Mg2Si [30]. Under the present conditions the distribution of
Mg2Si is homogenous as described above and the overall amount
of Si element is restricted when CMs content is low, resulting in
the small dimensions of the Mg2Si phase and this is benecial to
the improvement of the magnesium alloy composite foams elongation (or ductility). However, when more content of CMs is added,
large particle size of Mg2Si phase appears (as shown in Fig. 9)
and the ductility of the composite foams will decrease seriously
[21,29], resulting in the brittle fracture of the foams.
As described above, the deformation mode of the foams is mainly determined by two factors, the morphology of Mg2Si phase and
the uniformity of the pore size. When the content of CMs is low the
dimension of Mg2Si phase is small and the uniformity of the pore
size is increased, which are benecial to the ductile fracture behavior of the foams. However, when the content of CMs is high the
dimension of Mg2Si phase changes to from small pieces to blocky
ones and the increase of the pore size uniformity are not so obvious
as the initial stage, leading to the brittle fracture behavior of the
foams.

5. Conclusions
A modied melt foaming method is used to produce
CMs-containing magnesium matrix composite foams. The CMs distributes in the cell walls homogeneously and most of them keep
the original shapes, free of being smashed by stirring. Most of
CMs are permeated due to the reaction between the CMs and magnesium alloy melt. Meanwhile, due to the addition of CMs (Mg2Si
particles), the number of nucleation particles of bubbles increases
and the viscosity of magnesium melt is improved, resulting in
smaller pore size, more homogeneous pore structure and

controllable porosity of the composite foams. Besides, the proper

addition of CMs changes the foams deformation mode from brittleness to ductility due to the homogeneous distribution of Mg2Si and
the improved uniformity of the pore size. However, when excessive CMs is added the Mg2Si segregates to blocky ones, leading to
the brittle fracture behavior of the foams.
Acknowledgements
The present authors wish to thank the nancial support provided by Hebei Province School Cooperation Fund Projects, Program
for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in
University (No. IRT13060), Science and Technology Project of
Hebei Province (13211008D).
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