Principle of dynamic decompression and cooling for materials processing

When a melt seeded with droplets of a volatile liquid is rapidly decompressed, the droplets explosively vaporize, taking their latent heat of 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 theoretically investigated. To test the premises of this theoretical model, preliminary experiments with an organic melt (p-terphenyl) seeded with water drops were performed. Results of these experiments demonstrate the potential of this novel approach to materials processing.