PRINCIPLE OF DYNAMIC DECOMPRESSION AND COOLING FOR MATERIALS PROCESSING

When a melt seeded with droplets of a volatile liquid is rapidly decom pressed, the droplets explosively vaporize, taking their latent heat o f vaporization from the melt and, therefore, homogeneously cooling and expanding it. The possibility of using this dynamic decompression and cooling (DDC) technique for producing an amorphous metallic foam is t heoretically investigated. To test the premises of this theoretical mo del, preliminary experiments with an organic melt (p-terphenyl) seeded with water drops were performed. Results of these experiments demonst rate the potential of this novel approach to materials processing.