CD Laboratory for Advanced Aluminum Alloys

Reducing the weight of components in the transport sector is an essential contribution to achieving the CO2 climate targets. This CD Laboratory will develop new aluminium alloys for complex lightweight components for mass production.

The central theme of this CD Laboratory is ensuring more sustainable mobility. The global need to reduce CO2 emissions and save energy is leading to enormous pressure to expand the possibilities of lightweight materials. Light metals such as aluminium alloys, which in the form of wrought aluminium alloys - in contrast to cast alloys - are particularly suitable for processing by plastic deformation (e.g. deep drawing). Aluminium alloys have long been established in the aerospace industry, whereas in the past, wrought aluminium materials were generally only used in expensive vehicles. However, legal regulations are demanding the increasing use of aluminium in the mass production of mid-range vehicles in order to reduce CO2 emissions in significant quantities.

However, aluminium materials cannot simply replace heavier steel in mass applications at present, as the ratio of strength to formability is even less favourable for aluminium alloys. Complex lightweight construction and design parts require a high degree of mouldability of the material with simultaneous strength in order to minimise damage in the event of accidents or hailstorms, for example. Most industrially relevant metal-physical mechanisms that increase strength simultaneously reduce ductility or mouldability (strength-ductility paradigm).

Two approaches are being pursued in the CD Laboratory for Advanced Aluminium Alloys in order to achieve decisive improvements in this area. On the one hand, "switchable" alloys are being developed. These should have low strength during the moulding process and high strength in the final state. The aim is to achieve a particularly high level of control over the switching process from a readily mouldable and soft to a very strong state and to apply this approach to various wrought alloy classes. The understanding of the underlying kinetic processes is to be extended from experimental observation to the simulation of the movement of individual atoms. On the other hand, an attempt will be made to improve the strength and ductility with industrially applicable means. This is done by combining the advantages of different classes of wrought aluminium alloys, which have optimum formability and strength, and by means of microstructure optimisation. In addition, new aluminium alloys are being sought which make an increased strength-ductility combination achievable.

In this way, cost-effective alloys suitable for mass production are to be identified, which fulfil the high demands on their formability and ductility while at the same time offering high strength.