This paper reviews the background and evolution of composite metal foam (CMF) from its inception until now. A broad understanding of the processing and basic mechanical, microstructural, and physical properties of different types of composite metal foams is discussed in the first part of the paper. In the second part, some recent studies on high strain rate properties, ballistic performance, radiation attenuation, and thermal properties of composite metal foams are discussed and compared with other bulk and control materials. These properties suggest many potential applications for this novel material in a broad range of engineering structures from ballistic armors to trains', cars', buses', helicopters' crashworthiness systems, and many others such as nuclear casks and thermal insulating units.

a b s t r a c tA comprehensive experimental and computational evaluation of thermal behavior and fire retardant properties of composite metal foams (CMFs) is reported in this study. Thermal behavior characterizations were carried out through specific heat, effective thermal conductivity, and coefficient of thermal expansion analyses using differential scanning calorimetry, high temperature guarded-comparativelongitudinal heat flow technique, and thermomechanical analyzer (TMA), respectively. The experimental results were compared with analytical results obtained from, respectively, rule of mixture, Brailsford and Major's model, and modified Turner's model for verification. United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC) standards were employed as regulatory standards and criteria for fire retardant property study. The results revealed a superior thermal resistance and fire survivability of CMFs compared to 304L stainless steel. A physics-based three-dimensional model accounting for heat conduction was built using Finite Element Analysis to validate the reliability of the experimental results. The model led to a good reproduction of the experimentally measured data when comparing CMF to bulk stainless steel. This research indicates that one of the potential applications of lightweight CMFs can be in nuclear spent fuel casks replacing conventional structural and radiation shielding materials with demonstrated benefits of excellent thermal isolation, fire retardant, light weight and energy absorption capabilities.

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