Studies on wear behavior of aluminium foam developed by spray forming route

In the present study, aluminium syntactic foam has been fabricated using cenosphere space holder by spray forming route, and its wear behavior is investigated. The microstructure of foam shows that cenosphere distributed uniformly into the matrix. Detailed investigation of reciprocating friction wear has been carried out, and finally, the fretting wear behavior of aluminium foam evaluated against tungsten carbide ball under fretting wear mode and compared with the as received commercially available aluminium. The mechanism and kinetics of wear have also been studied through a detail microstructure analysis of the worn surface. The results show that the cenosphere space holder decreases the relative density, increases the hardness and wear properties of foam compare to their solid material counterparts. Wear studies of foam show a substantial improvement in wear resistance in comparison with commercial aluminium.