Browse Topic: Aluminum
For brake and clutch components of aircraft vehicles which require higher mechanical strength and wear resilient, light-weight aluminium composites were developed infusing solid lubricant. In this study, hybrid composites were developed using powder metallurgy route with aluminum alloy AA356 and various amounts of zirconium oxide (ZrO2) (0, 5, 10, 15, and 20 wt.%) as reinforcements. A solid lubricant hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) at a fixed 5 wt.% is considered. Following the appropriate ASTM guidelines, the specimens were mechanically characterized by measuring their density, porosity, micro-hardness, compression strength, impact strength, and flexural strength, among other properties. The findings showed that the composites' mechanical and physical behaviour were greatly affected by the inclusion of ZrO2. Porosity increased as a result of particle clustering and interfacial voids, while density increased gradually as ceramic content increased. Consistently increasing ZrO2 addition led to micro-hardness improvements; at 20 wt.% reinforcement, values reached their maximum, indicating that the hard ceramic phase contributed to better surface resistance. The best balance between particle reinforcement and matrix continuity was suggested by the compression and flexural strengths peaking at 15 wt.% ZrO2. However, when the addition was raised to 20 wt.%, brittleness and porosity began to marginally deteriorate. Unreinforced and lower ZrO2 composites had superior toughness in impact, whereas materials with a higher content had a poorer energy absorption capacity. The 5 wt.% hBN improved fracture arresting capabilities and helped load transmission over the interface. Inclusion of hBN provides solid-lubricating tribofilm formation that enhances the tribological performance. This study reveals that AA356/ZrO2-hBN hybrid composites have good hardness and compressive strength improvements, with 15 wt.% ZrO2 being the best composition with good strength, toughness, and wear resistance.
Inverters are typically integrated into electric drive units for electric vehicles (EVs) to reduce packaging size and cost. However, coupled vibrations from the electric motor and gears are transmitted to the inverter, which can become a dominant noise source due to its large radiative panel. Metal panels are required for electromagnetic interference (EMI) compliance, yet these covers usually lack sufficient stiffness or damping for noise control. Adding ribs and applying damping treatments result in excessive mass, cost, and packaging challenges. A new bubble sheet panel design has been developed to enhance the structural strength and damping performance of the inverter cover while significantly reducing its mass. A thin sheet of aluminum is welded onto the cover in an optimized pattern that enhances stiffness and damping performance while accommodating packaging requirements. The welding pattern can include logos or artistic designs to improve the panel’s appearance. The metal sheets are blown apart between the welds to form a 3D structure that is three times stiffer and twice as strong as a flat monolithic sheet of the same thickness. The composite dual bubble sheets can effectively reduce structural vibration. Damping materials, such as liquid-applied sound deadener (LASD), can be injected into the bubble sheet cavities to significantly improve its damping performance. Prototype bubble sheets have been designed, analyzed, and tested for an integrated inverter used in front-wheel-drive (FWD) electric drive unit for EV applications. Analysis and modal tests show a reduction of 10 to 15 dB at panel resonances with close to 30% reduction in mass. The bubble sheet panel is installed on an integrated inverter and tested in the electric drive unit. Sound power measurements confirm a reduction of up to 10 dB in inverter panel vibration.
This year will mark my 20th year trying to understand the automotive industry as a journalist. A full understanding is, of course, an impossible task. The global scale, the endless levels of complexity, the billions of consumers and dollars and components. But it's been an enjoyable mission, one that has a 0% chance of becoming boring any time soon, even if I might want the ups and downs to stop being quite so dramatically high and low. As I write this in mid-March, the U.S. is still launching attacks at Iran with nothing but ever-changing threads of reasoning attached. The resulting chaos has shot gas prices in the U.S. back to what they were at this time of year in 2024, according to AAA, and governments from Japan to the UK are searching for ways to intervene and keep gas prices under some semblance of control. The Danish energy minister suggested people there avoid driving their cars unless it is “strictly necessary.” And yet, a fair number of analysts now find more things to worry about in the Middle East than they can point to areas of security. Without a doubt, the war's tendrils have already begun reaching into food production (apparently around fertilizer sourcing), health care (at least one apparent Iran-connected hack), and the auto industry, with initial supply chain questions revolving around aluminum and plastics, is the sense I'm getting. In the U.S., spot shipping rates have jumped almost 30% in recent weeks, which will only worsen the financial troubles OEMs and suppliers are facing in getting vehicles to customers.
Between the 1920s and 1930s, aluminum started replacing wood as the primary material in aircraft construction and soon became the backbone of modern aviation. Its popularity stemmed from a combination of properties, high strength-to-weight ratio, corrosion resistance, and ease of forming that made it ideal for demanding aerospace applications. Throughout much of the 20th century, high-strength aluminum alloys dominated aircraft design, accounting for 70-80 percent of commercial airframes and more than half of many military aircraft. Even after the introduction of fiber-polymer composites in the early 2000s, aluminum has remained a critical material because it continues to offer the strength, lightness, and versatility needed for modern aviation. Industry forecasts predict that commercial air travel will double in the next 25 years, which means more pollution will be released into the atmosphere. One way to help reduce these emissions is by building airplane fuselages and wings with lighter and stronger materials.
In research published in Cell Reports Physical Science, the NJIT team led by Professor Dibakar Datta successfully applied generative AI techniques to rapidly discover new porous materials capable of revolutionizing multivalent-ion batteries. These batteries, using abundant elements like magnesium, calcium, aluminum, and zinc, offer a promising, cost-effective alternative to lithium-ion batteries, which face global supply challenges and sustainability issues.
This study investigates Reynolds number effects on rotor wake vortex development using a hyperbaric rotor facility capable of pressurizing air up to 100 bar. Background-oriented schlieren (BOS) and hot-wire anemometry (HWA) were applied to characterize vortex trajectories, core growth, and circumferential velocity distribution. BOS measurements revealed consistent blade-to-blade trajectory deviations and vortex pairing across all operating conditions, despite that the investigated three-bladed rotor was milled from a single piece of aluminum, ensuring precise manufacturing and a highly symmetric geometry. A statistical scheme was developed to analyze the radial structure of fluctuating tip vortices, which traverse the pointwise fiber-film sensor in a fixed position. With increasing vortex Reynolds number, the tip vortices are more compact with a reduction in core growth. The circulation in the vortices grows with the vortex radial coordinate, and converges at a radial position basically independent of the vortex core size. Observed asymmetries in young vortices at low Reynolds numbers indicate enhanced roll-up dynamics. The results demonstrate the facility’s ability to isolate Reynolds number effects in rotor wake dynamics.
With performance advances proposed for the Future Vertical Lift suite of aircraft and advancements in the electronic battlefield, it is imperative that advanced materials and concepts be included in the vehicle designs to meet the aggressive weight reduction objectives, structural requirements, and operational environment capabilities. Integrating electromagnetic (EM) shielding during the design process offers an opportunity to make progress towards the performance goals. To this end, efforts must be made to minimize the impact of this shielding to platform weight and structural performance. This article presents work to develop a hybrid multifunctional composite material technology that incorporates copper mesh into a carbon fiber and thermoplastic matrix structural composite material to achieve required levels of EM shielding and high levels of structural efficiency while reducing the overall weight of the system. This article focuses on the design of a representative helicopter tailcone as means of illustrating expected improvements in weight and manufacturing cost. Baselines that include structure fabricated from aluminum and thermoset composite are established and predicted improvements quantified.
Image-based machine learning (ML) methods are increasingly transforming the field of materials science, offering powerful tools for automatic analysis of microstructures and failure mechanisms. This paper provides an overview of the latest advancements in ML techniques applied to materials microstructure and failure analysis, with a particular focus on the automatic detection of porosity and oxide defects and microstructure features such as dendritic arms and eutectic phase in aluminum casting. By leveraging image-based data, such as metallographic and fractographic images, ML models can identify patterns that are difficult to detect through conventional methods. The integration of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and advanced image processing algorithms not only accelerates the analysis process but also improves accuracy by reducing subjectivity in interpretation. Key studies and applications are further reviewed to highlight the benefits, challenges, and future directions of using ML in material failure analysis through image processing.
It is a fool's errand to make timely comments - in print! - about our current political turmoil. Even so, it feels important to place a marker in the sand to note the ongoing political reign of tariff threats, the upheaval potential of a demolished regulatory state affecting road and vehicle safety, and the damage that cuts to electric vehicle support might do to American automakers attempting to keep technological pace with their global automaker peers. It's a lot. The mainstream press is reporting the broad strokes of the industry's reaction to the new president. Ford CEO Jim Farley said Trump's erratic threats and changes are adding “a lot of cost and a lot of chaos” to the automotive industry and that a 25% tariff would “blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we've never seen.” Volvo Cars CEO Jim Rowan said that profitability would suffer under any tariffs, whether those are the general 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico (now seemingly canceled after Trump backed down), just-announced 10% tariffs on steel and aluminum or some yet-to-be-spoken-aloud new tariff concept. Industry analyst Sam Fiorani told The Independent the obvious truth that “raising the price of what is among the most important components of the vehicle is only going to raise the prices of an already expensive product.”
The foundation specification (AMS3050) and this category specification (AMS3050/2) cover anti-seize greases conforming to the requirements, but using the anti-seize ingredient Aluminum only.
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