THE SILVERY SEDUCTION OF ALUMINUM FOAM

Architects use 'ethereal' new material to evoke the vanished World Trade Center

Guess which terrific new industrial material has the following double appeal: it offers great protection from exploding bombs, and is also highly attractive as a decorative wall covering for night clubs.

The correct answer is not that you wouldn't go to a nightclub like that. It's that Mississauga's Cymat Inc. has developed a product called Stabilized Aluminum Foam (SAF) which appeals to both architects and Pentagon generals. By injecting compressed air and ceramic particles into a crucible of molten aluminum, Cymat's engineers produce a material which looks like a silvery chunk of Swiss cheese.

Celebrity Architect Frank Gehry poses with a model of the building he designed in Arles, France. Gehry plans to use Alusion (stacked in the background) to clad the building’s exterior.

To celebrity architect Frank Gehry, the dramatic, knobbled texture of aluminum foam makes it the perfect material to clad a new building complex in Arles, France. It's already seen on churches, schools and public buildings in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

But SAF's major future market will almost certainly come from its ability to resist blast energy or concussive force. Dealt a powerful blow, its metallic bubbles break down one by one, absorbing impact until the explosion is neutralized.

"It's a product that gets you excited," says David Fowler, who became president of Cymat last year. He originally trained as an engineer, and the metal foam intrigues him. "It's architecturally interesting but also has particular properties for blast mitigation. It's interesting to look at. The product is cool."

The rights to SAF were sold to Cymat in 1995 by its developers, Alcan and Norsk Hydro. "Alcan saw that it was a specialty business that needed focused management," explains Fowler.

About ten years ago architects began to order SAF panels for night club décor. Shorn of its solid skin the material even becomes translucent, with light glowing through the aluminum bubbles. Demand was such that Cymat launched it as a separate product, called Alusion.

Late last year Alusion was announced as the material of choice for a 55,000 square foot sculpture in the proposed September 11 Memorial Museum at the World Trade Center site in New York. Davis Brody Bond Aedas, the firm which designed the museum, said that "Alusion panels will be lit in a way that creates a dematerialized and ethereal surface" evoking the World Trade Centre.

"So now we've got more business in our hopper than we've had in a long time," says Fowler, adding that 2011 will be the company's most successful sales year. Especially gratifying was Spanish architect Francisco Mangado's personal visit to Cymat's Mississauga plant early in February after signing an order for $2.2-million of Alusion panels. Their silvery, scale-like texture will symbolize the belly of a giant fish on the new Congress Centre building on the island of Mallorca, Spain.

Kevin Smith, Cymat's vice president for business development, says that Alusion, priced at $11 to $24 a square foot, is cheaper than marble or granite yet well able to compete with them as an elite material. The Mississauga plant can produce up to thirty million dollars a year of the cladding product.

Smart Metal: When dealt a powerful blow, its metallic bubbles break down one by one.

The Alusion panels, says Fowler, will carry the company until contracts are signed for the military cladding product, called SmartMetal. While the U.S. Congress is tightening the military budget this year, he is confident that SmartMetal will soon become the company's major product. "I am bullish on military opportunity," emphasizes Fowler. Multi-year military contracts will better enable Cymat to "break through in the stock market".

There is also long-term interest in SAF from high-end car designers, who have tested it as a safety-enhancing and fuel-saving material in elite automobiles, where an SAF part can be more than 80 per cent lighter than equivalent solid aluminum. Kevin Smith sees great promise in the electric car market, which "will have to go lightweight".

Whether on the battlefield, or in the feather-light cars of tomorrow, SAF is one of the remarkable innovations of the new century.