Recent Developments in Processing and Characterization of Metal Foam: Review

Metal foam is a novel class of metals that is inspired by naturally occurring, functionally graded, cellular structures like wood and bones. Owing to the diverse physical and mechanical properties that can be tailored to suit a particular need, metal foams have become attractive to researchers and efforts are being made to optimize the methodology to develop the metal foam. This paper presents an overview of all the traditional and the state of art manufacturing methods adopted till date with their advantages and limitations as well. The manuscript further investigates characterization techniques used to characterize metal foam. Also, a summary of the most relevant applications with actual examples is presented.