The advantages of aluminum alloy in vehicle lightweight development

   Since environment protection and energy-saving becomes more and more concerned, the lightweight technology of vehicle has come into the stage. The aluminum alloy has a natural-born advantage in the vehicle lightweight development. It is an ideal material to make vehicle bodies for a lighter weight. The vehicle lightweight technology specifies in 3 categories, the body lightweight, the engine lightweight and the chassis lightweight, all of which are for a lighter weight with no sacrifice in performance to realize environment protection.

   The advantages of aluminum alloy in vehicle industry are

   A. Significantly light weight. Aluminum is an excellent metal in mechanics performance with an intensity of only 1/3 of steel’s, and it has excellent thermal conductivity which is just less excellent than copper, but its mechanical performance is 4.5 times better than steel. And the natural oxidized film on its surface makes aluminum corrosion-resistant. All these reasons make aluminum the prior perfect material for vehicle lightweight.

   B. Aluminum used for vehicle enhances comfort and safety of the passengers. Aluminum alloy can reduce the vehicle weight without reducing the space capacity of the vehicle. Less weight means less inertia, which makes the driving more stable and more comfortable. Since aluminum has an excellent kinetic energy absorbability, its shows a great advantage in crash impact protection. The deformation part in front of the vehicle will shrink and wrinkles when crash happens, which can absorb huge amount of the impact to protect the driver and passengers behind it.

   C. Recycle value. Aluminum is hardly or just slightly corroded in its usage. For the industrial-used aluminum, the recycle value is pretty high. And the loss of aluminum is just 5% in the recycle period raw aluminum-aluminum products-duration-recycled aluminum ingot-re-produced raw aluminum, recycle value of which is higher than any other kind of metal.