Cargo Business Techwire

Friday, December 12, 2014

High speed trains to be made of aluminum foam

Another technology breakthrough is coming for high-speed train technology — trains made of aluminum foam, a material that’s stronger, lighter, and better in a crash than fiberglass or regular old metal.

Engineers in Chemitz, Germany unveiled a prototype high-speed train cab made with aluminum foam earlier this year. The composite material is built like a sandwich: Between two pieces of aluminum, each just two millimeters thick, is a 25-millimeter-thick layer of the "foam," actually a low-density, sponge-like composite of magnesium, silicon, copper, and aluminum. The layers are held together by metallic bonding, the electrostatic attraction of negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions.

The result is a material that’s 20 percent lighter than traditional fiberglass, which is commonly used on high-speed train cabs. That’s a big advantage when the goal is to move faster and more efficiently.

"The outer shell is so stiff that you need no ribs inside," says Dr. Thomas Hipke, head of lightweight construction at the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology, which helped to design the prototype train cab. Peel tests of aluminum foam — in which force is applied to pull apart the layers of the material — destroy the foam interior instead of breaking the bonds between the layers, demonstrating the strength of the bonding.

The comparably cushy substance makes the inside of the train safer in a collision, too.

For more of the Wired story: www.wired.com

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