Influence of Gas Pressure and Blowing Agent Content on the Formation of Aluminum Alloy Foam

Apart from density and alloy composition, the structure of solid metallic foams determines their mechanical performance. Herein, the effect of ambient pressure on the foaming behavior of AlSi6Cu4 precursors is studied. In situ X ray radioscopy is applied while foaming in a furnace chamber pressurized up to 40 amp; 8201;bar. The content of the blowing agent TiH2 is varied for each of the pressures chosen. The foam density and morphology are analyzed quantitatively using time resolved X ray radioscopy sequences and postsolidification X ray tomography data. The optimal content of blowing agent as well as the pore sizes and distributions is found to depend strongly on the ambient pressure. At high pressures very small, round, and uniformly distributed pores are formed and crack formation is avoided during the gas nucleation stage, which helps to prevent structural defects. Adjusting the ambient pressure allows for better control of the foam structure and density, which is relevant for commercial production and applicatio

Short Range Ordered Aluminum Foams

Ordering the bubbles of closed cell aluminum foams can contribute to decorative esthetics and create directional mechanical properties that disordered foams do not have. High porosity gt;80 aluminum foams prepared by the traditional static gas injection method usually have large and polyhedral cells, which do not form an ordered stacking. Aluminum foams with relatively uniform and small cells cell size amp; 8776;1.2 amp; 8201;mm have been recently obtained by gas injection through a nozzle rotating at high speed. Herein, the stacking of aluminum foams with different cell sizes and a monodisperse aqueous foam are characterized by X ray tomography and compared with an ideal face centered cubic FCC structure. The aluminum foam featuring the smallest cells has a concentrated distribution of cell coordination number with a peak of 12 and the first peaks of the radial distribution function are found to be consistent with those of the monodisperse aqueous foam and an ideal FCC structure. Furthermore, many aligned bubble chains with more than five bubbles are observed on cross sectional images. Therefore, aluminum foam can become short range ordered whenever the cell size is uniform enough and reduced to around 1.2 amp; 8201;mm. Methods for further improving the order of aluminum foam are discusse

Visualisation of stabilising particles at the gas solid interface of metal foams

In this article, we demonstrate a technique to visualise the stabilising particles at the gas solid interface of metal foams by employing metallographic etching. This technique is easy to perform and can be applied on a relatively large sample size. The particles present at the gas solid interface of five different types of foams were investigated. Information on the type of particles and the particle coverage could be obtained from this stud

Tomoscopy Time Resolved Tomography for Dynamic Processes in Materials

The structure and constitution of opaque materials can be studied with X ray imaging methods such as 3D tomography. To observe the dynamic evolution of their structure and the distribution of constituents, for example, during processing, heating, mechanical loading, etc., 3D imaging has to be fast enough. In this paper, the recent developments of time resolved X ray tomography that have led to what one now calls tomoscopy are briefly reviewed A novel setup is presented and applied that pushes temporal resolution down to just 1 ms, that is, 1000 tomograms per second tps are acquired, while maintaining spatial resolutions of micrometers and running experiments for minutes without interruption. Applications recorded at different acquisition rates ranging from 50 to 1000 tps are presented. The authors observe and quantify the immiscible hypermonotectic reaction of AlBi10 in wt alloy and dendrite evolution in AlGe10 in wt casting alloy during fast solidification. The combustion process and the evolution of the constituents are analyzed in a burning sparkler. Finally, the authors follow the structure and density of two metal foams over a long period of time and derive details of bubble formation and bubble ageing including quantitative analyses of bubble parameters with millisecond temporal resolutio

Two-pion Bose-Einstein correlations in central Pb-Pb collisions at sNN\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 2.76 TeV

The first measurement of two-pion Bose-Einstein correlations in central Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 2.76$ TeV at the Large Hadron Collider is presented. We observe a growing trend with energy now not only for the longitudinal and the outward but also for the sideward pion source radius. The pion homogeneity volume and the decoupling time are significantly larger than those measured at RHIC.Comment: 17 pages, 5 captioned figures, 1 table, authors from page 12, published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/388

Update on the correlation of the highest energy cosmic rays with nearby extragalactic matter

Data collected by the Pierre Auger Observatory through 31 August 2007 showed evidence for anisotropy in the arrival directions of cosmic rays above the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuz'min energy threshold, \nobreak{$6\times 10^{19}$eV}. The anisotropy was measured by the fraction of arrival directions that are less than $3.1^\circ$ from the position of an active galactic nucleus within 75 Mpc (using the V\'eron-Cetty and V\'eron $12^{\rm th}$ catalog). An updated measurement of this fraction is reported here using the arrival directions of cosmic rays recorded above the same energy threshold through 31 December 2009. The number of arrival directions has increased from 27 to 69, allowing a more precise measurement. The correlating fraction is $(38^{+7}_{-6})$, compared with $21$ expected for isotropic cosmic rays. This is down from the early estimate of $(69^{+11}_{-13})$. The enlarged set of arrival directions is examined also in relation to other populations of nearby extragalactic objects: galaxies in the 2 Microns All Sky Survey and active galactic nuclei detected in hard X-rays by the Swift Burst Alert Telescope. A celestial region around the position of the radiogalaxy Cen A has the largest excess of arrival directions relative to isotropic expectations. The 2-point autocorrelation function is shown for the enlarged set of arrival directions and compared to the isotropic expectation.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physics on 31 August 201

Suppression of charged particle production at large transverse momentum in central Pb-Pb collisions at sNN=2.76\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 2.76 TeV

Inclusive transverse momentum spectra of primary charged particles in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{\rm NN}}}$ = 2.76 TeV have been measured by the ALICE Collaboration at the LHC. The data are presented for central and peripheral collisions, corresponding to 0-5% and 70-80% of the hadronic Pb-Pb cross section. The measured charged particle spectra in $|\eta|<0.8$ and $0.3 < p_T < 20$ GeV/$c$ are compared to the expectation in pp collisions at the same $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$, scaled by the number of underlying nucleon-nucleon collisions. The comparison is expressed in terms of the nuclear modification factor $R_{\rm AA}$. The result indicates only weak medium effects ($R_{\rm AA} \approx$ 0.7) in peripheral collisions. In central collisions, $R_{\rm AA}$ reaches a minimum of about 0.14 at $p_{\rm T}=6$-7GeV/$c$ and increases significantly at larger $p_{\rm T}$. The measured suppression of high-$p_{\rm T}$ particles is stronger than that observed at lower collision energies, indicating that a very dense medium is formed in central Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages, 5 captioned figures, 3 tables, authors from page 10, published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/98

Search for direct stau production in events with two hadronic tau-leptons in root s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of the supersymmetric partners ofτ-leptons (staus) in final stateswith two hadronically decayingτ-leptons is presented. The analysis uses a dataset of pp collisions corresponding to an integrated luminosity of139fb−1, recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LargeHadron Collider at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. No significant deviation from the expected StandardModel background is observed. Limits are derived in scenarios of direct production of stau pairs with eachstau decaying into the stable lightest neutralino and oneτ-lepton in simplified models where the two staumass eigenstates are degenerate. Stau masses from 120 GeV to 390 GeV are excluded at 95% confidencelevel for a massless lightest neutralino