Carmakers are increasingly turning their attention to lightweight construction. Extruded aluminium profiles are therefore playing an ever greater role in body components. A new working group comprising representatives from the car industry, extrusion plants and research institutes now wants to develop a specification for the manufacture of extruded aluminium profiles for structural car components.

Extruded aluminium profiles have become established as structural body components in ever more classes of vehicle. However, existing technical procurement guidelines are insufficient for providing design engineers with adequate support in order to develop car bodies using extruded aluminium profiles, and will continue to be so in the future. Besides general mechanical property data, design engineers also need data relating to isotropy and forming, such as those which are already available when using steel or aluminium sheet in vehicle manufacturing.

In order to obtain these material properties, three OEMs, 16 extrusion plants and four research institutes have joined forces under the leadership of GDA Gesamtverband der Aluminiumindustrie e.V., Düsseldorf, to form the GDA Automotive Extrusion Working Group. “The main tasks of the working group are the determination of additional material properties for aluminium profiles, the avoidance or reduction of scatter bands for these values between different manufacturers and finally the drawing up of a specification for the manufacture of extruded aluminium profiles for structural car components,” explains GDA Technical Officer Wolfgang Heidrich, who is chairing the working group.

“The specification, which should be completed by the middle of 2011, will help further optimise extruded profiles for use in carmaking and open up additional opportunities for lightweight construction,” adds Wolfgang Heidrich. This will facilitate further weight reductions for structural body applications using aluminium profiles. Furthermore, the field of application for profiles will be extended in order to better utilise the potential that extruded profiles have to offer. A similar specification has already been prepared by the aluminium rolling industry: Prüf- u. Dokumentationsrichtlinie für die mechanischen Kennwerte von Walzprodukten aus Aluminium (Test and Documentation Guideline for the Mechanical Properties of Rolled Aluminium Products).

Mechanical testing has already been carried out by the working group on reference cross-sections that were produced by different extrusion plants with their alloys and the respective process parameters. In another subproject, the relationships between the process parameters and the mechanical properties and the characteristics of the profiles are currently being determined under industrial manufacturing conditions.

The costs for the manufacturing and testing of the extruded profiles are being borne jointly by the participating companies.

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Your contact:

Wolfgang Heidrich
Gesamtverband der Aluminiumindustrie e.V. 
Am Bonneshof 5
40474 Düsseldorf
Germany
T: +49-211 / 47 96-271
F: +49-211 / 47 96-410
wolfgang.heidrich@aluinfo.de