Aluminum foam - a material for the building industry?!

For efficiency reasons many buildings are realized by using the lightweight design principles. The combination of fabric and lightweight structure plays a significant role. Although most lightweight materials, such as aluminum, are more expensive than the conventional materials concrete and structural steel, savings result due to the comprehensive cost analysis over the lifetime of a building. For example cost advantages can be achieved during the transport to the building site and in the dimensioning of the basement. Semi-finished aluminum foams, especially sandwiches are excellent for lightweight constructions. The applicability has already been proven in several serial applications for machine tools. In the building industry aluminum foam is still an almost unknown material. Due to ist cellular structure aluminum foam is very light. The material has also a high vibration damping capacity. Semi-finished products made from or made with aluminum foam are usually offered in shape of pure foam plates, sandwiches and foam-filled hollow structures. Large structures can excellently be produced by using prefabricated semi-finished aluminum foam. In this lecture the fabrication of the foams, their properties, available composite materials and opportunities for the machinability of the foams and their semi-finished products are shown and principles of lightweight design that can be realized with the new materials will be presented. Especially Aluminum foam combined with steel sheets - e. g. as a sandwich - is suitable for lightweight building structures. Particularly in industrial and hall construction these semi-finished products combine weight-bearing as well as stabilising functions. The lecture presents the first prototypical applications of aluminium foam semi-finished products in the building industry as well as ideas of future projects. Aim of currently running R&D - projects is to expand the property portfolio of aluminium foam semi-finished products significantly. One way will be the integration of additional functions such as heat storage.