High-performance aluminium foam sandwich prepared through friction stir welding.

Highlights • The aluminium foam sandwich was fabricated using friction stir welding. • No undesirable interface reaction existed among the face sheets and the foam core. • AFS prepared through FSW possessed high flexural strength and impact resistance. • The AFS possessed good sound absorption and insulation performance. Abstract The aluminium foam sandwich (AFS), prepared through the traditional adhesive or brazing methods, usually exhibits a low flexural strength due to the poor combination among the face sheets and the aluminium foam core. In this work, a new method, named friction stir welding (FSW), was utilized to fabricate AFS. The results demonstrated that the joining of the face sheets and aluminium foam was achieved through the plasticized metal flow. In addition, the AFS prepared through FSW possessed high flexural strength and impact resistance, as well as good sound absorption and reduction performance. This demonstrated that the FSW was a good method to prepare AFS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]