Development of a High Strength Fin Stock Aluminium Alloy

As part of the overall target in the automotive industry to decrease weight and production costs, the heat exchanger market has to develop more effective designs on an on-going basis. In turn this places demands on the material supplier to develop higher strength alloys, which enable down-gauging for lighter-weight structures, or the use of high pressure cycles, and/or an increased amount of fins for increased cooling efficiency. This increased performance must be achieved cost effectively and with brazing and corrosion performance equivalent to, or superior to, the existing material.

In order to meet these demands Corus Aluminium has developed over the last few years new families of improved alloys for heat exchanger tubes and core plates, that are suitable for Vacuum and/or Controlled Atmosphere Brazing (CAB) [1]. To further complete this development a programme was started to develop a series of high strength alloys for the heat exchanger cooling fins.

This paper presents an overview of the latest alloy developments at Corus Aluminium in the field of Fin Stock alloys.