Aluminum in the Aerospace Industry

After the aluminum in the aerospace industry is placed at room temperature for a certain period of time, the strength will gradually increase with the extension of the placing time. This phenomenon was later known as age hardening, and it attracted widespread attention as a core technology that first promoted the development of aircraft aluminum alloy material technology. In the following hundred years, aerospace aluminum workers have focused on in-depth research has been carried out in many aspects of the composition and synthesis method of aluminum alloy, material processing technology such as rolling, extrusion, forging, heat treatment, manufacturing and processing of aluminum alloy parts, characterization and improvement of material structure service performance, etc.

Aluminum in the aerospace industry are usually called aerospace aluminum alloys, which have a series of advantages such as high specific strength, good processing and formability, low cost and good maintainability, and are widely used in aircraft main structural materials. In the future, the improvement of the design requirements of flight speed, structural weight reduction and stealth of the new generation of advanced aircraft will greatly strengthen the requirements for the specific strength, specific stiffness, damage tolerance performance, manufacturing cost and structural integration of aerospace aluminum alloys.

What are the uses of aluminum in the aerospace industry manufacturing? The following is an example of the specific uses of several grades of aviation aluminum alloys.

1, 2024 aluminum plate, namely 2A12 aluminum plate, has high fracture toughness and low fatigue crack growth rate, and is the most commonly used skin material for aircraft fuselage and underwings.

2, The 7075 aluminum plate was successfully developed in 1943 and was the first practical 7xxx aluminum alloy. It was successfully applied to the B-29 bomber. The strength of the 7075-T6 aluminum alloy was the highest among the aluminum alloys at that time, but its resistance to stress corrosion and Exfoliation corrosion resistance is poor.

3, The 7050 aluminum plate is developed on the basis of the 7075 aluminum alloy, so as to obtain better comprehensive properties of strength, exfoliation corrosion resistance and stress corrosion resistance, and is applied to the compression components of the F-18 aircraft.

4, 6061 aluminum plate is the earliest 6XXX series aluminum alloy used in aviation. It has good corrosion resistance and excellent welding performance, but the strength is moderately low.