Advances in the Manufacture and Performance of Aluminium Heat Exchanger Materials

The use of aluminium alloys in automotive heat exchangers, including both engine cooling and air conditioning systems, is now well established for vacuum, and more recently, non corrosive flux brazing.

There is a growing trend towards greater weight saving and, thus, increasing the mechanical, thermal and corrosion performance of the heat exchanger. This has placed greater demand on improving material properties for tubestock, platestock and finstock for radiators and other types of heat exchanger units. This paper discusses some of the key material developments within Alcan Rolled Products UK to meet these growing demands from the automotive heat exchanger industry and, in particular the need to select material systems to meet the requirements of individual applications.