Porous metallic product and method for making same

Abstract

This invention pertains to a product and a method for making the product. The product is a lightweight solid porous metallic product containing small solid spheres having a coating of a primary alpha phase thereon disposed in a solid metal alloy eutectic matrix. The method includes the steps of mixing the hollow rigid spheres and a metal alloy, which metal alloy can be preheated to render it molten, in order to form a dispersion of the spheres distributed in the molten alloy; initially cooling the dispersion to render it semi-solid whereby the spheres are coated by a solid and the coated spheres are disposed in the semi-solid mixture of the solid and liquid; and finally cooling the sphere-containing semi-solid mixture to a temperature at which the sphere-containing semi-solid mixture becomes solid and the product is formed.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.