Manufacturing of carbon nanotube reinforced aluminium foam composite materials and analysis of material properties and application possibilities in automotive and aerospace industry

Since their discovery, carbon nanotubes have attracted great interest from the scientific world due to their unusual material properties. These material properties are intended to provide solutions to today's engineering problems by using CNTs alone or in composite structures with other engineering materials. In this thesis, first of all, the electric arc and CVD method, which are among the CNT production techniques, were tried experimentally. Two different cold-walled reactors operating with the CVD technique were designed. Production was carried out successfully in both reactors. The production reactors, which are classified as cold-walled, allow production with different catalysts and carbon sources. The produced carbon nanotubes were characterised using SEM and Raman spectroscopy. Multi-walled CNTs as well as spiral carbon nanofibers have also been produced. The diameter values of CNTs vary between 50nm and 300nm. The CNTs produced were used as additives in the production of aluminum foam material in the second stage of the thesis study. The use of foaming agents and the use of placeholder techniques were examined and the placeholder technique was preferred because of better control of cell sizes. Urea particles were used as placeholders in the production of foam material. With the developed focused addition method, CNTs were added intensively, especially around the cell walls. With the experimental design, it was investigated how much the addition of CNT to the structure caused an increase in strength in terms of yield stress in compression compared to other production parameters of the aluminum foam material. Experiment results showed that the main factors are sintering temperature and sintering time. The addition of CNT following these two parameters showed that the additive at the level of 0.3% by weight brought an increase of 10% in strength, and it was seen that it was an innovative approach in terms of strength increases with low amounts of CNT additive. This contribution can be increased by considering the cost effect. Studies on reducing CNT production costs and finding more effective diffusion methods in matrix structures will make CNT contributions more common.