Macroscopic fracture behavior of nickel foam under tension

Purpose – The samples of nickel foam with porosity of about 88 percent were uniaxially tensioned at room temperature, and the phenomena of tensile fracture were compared with that from the fully dense plate of metal nickel. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differences between their behaviors of tensile fracture. Design/methodology/approach – The tensile test was carried out by using the tester of CMT-series microcomputer-controlled electronic universal testing machine. The difference of tensile fracture behavior between the nickel foam and the dense metal nickel was discussed by analyzing the load-displacement curve and the microscopical fracture. Findings – The results indicated that, nickel foam also displayed the feature of macroscopic plastic-deformation during tension, but it showed a macroscopic brittleness much more than that of the fully dense body. The axial apparent strain at the maximum load for the foamed sample was markedly less than that for the dense one. In addition, an obvi...