Unified casting(UniCast)aluminum alloy—a sustainable and low-carbon materials solution for vehicle lightweighting

Casting aluminum(Al)alloys have been widely used in the automotive industry to improve fuel economy as well as to reduce greenhouse gas(GHG)emissions in the vehicle use phase.However,the casting Al alloys used for load-bearing body and chassis components today are mostly made from primary Al with a low impurity Fe content typically less than 0.2 wt.%,owing to the requirements for high ductility and adequate fatigue strength.Primary Al is made directly from alumina which was refined from aluminum ore(bauxite),using an electrolytic process which consumes a lot of energy and produces GHG emissions that are much higher than those from steel making.The objective of this paper is to present a Unified Casting(UniCast)Al alloy concept as a sustainable materials solution for vehicle lightweighting.The UniCast alloy chemistry is intentionally designed to be more tolerant of Fe impurity.This chemistry can not only satisfy the requirements on castability,but also deliver mechanical properties needed for a variety of thin-walled and thick-walled automotive structural components that are produced by various casting processes.The UniCast alloy concept will contribute to the establishment of a closed-loop recycling system in the future as the shredded scrap obtained from the disposed end-of-life vehicles can be directly recycled back into UniCast alloy ingot with a more efficient sorting process.In addition,by setting the upper limit of Fe content in the UniCast alloy to a higher level,it will become possible to use a high fraction of post-consumer scraps to produce this alloy.To demonstrate the feasibility of this concept,an exemplary UniCast alloy chemistry has been elaborated in this article.Furthermore,challenges and future research opportunities related to the realization of UniCast alloy concept in the automotive industry are discussed.It is hoped that this article will be of great implication to industrial researchers and academicians for making concerted efforts to establish closed-loop recycling of Al castings for the automotive and other transportation industry segments.

表贴式胶体与光纤弹性模量比对应变传递率的影响

表贴式光纤布拉格光栅传感器包括光纤、中间层、基体三部分,通过分析胶体与光纤的弹性模量比,探究胶体的弹性模量、泊松比、长度等因素对基体到光纤平均应变传递率的影响。实验结果表明,与未考虑弹性模量比时的平均应变传递率相比,考虑弹性模量比时,平均应变传递率随胶体弹性模量、长度的增加而增加,随胶体厚度、泊松比的增加而减小,随胶体宽度的增加先增加后减小,研究结果更符合实际应用情况。