ResAIFat

Project context

Aluminium is the third most abundant element in the Earth's crust after oxygen and silicon. Its properties, which include high mechanical strength and low density, make it widely used as a construction material.

Its strength is based on precipitation hardening, which requires a considerable amount of energy to age the material at elevated temperatures. In order to achieve this strength with less energy, a new technology has been developed that is based on mechanical stress profiles instead of thermal ageing.

Aluminium is also a highly recyclable material. However, alloys with a high proportion of secondary material tend to have low strength. The newly developed technology makes it possible to greatly increase the strength of recycled material, thus making recycled materials usable for engineering applications.

Project description

Instead of heating the material, mechanical stresses were applied in the form of a specially adapted alternating load profile under tensile-compressive stress, which ultimately leads to the hardening of the material. These cycles were optimised within the project by testing different stresses and time intervals and correlating them with the increase in strength of the material.

To test the strength of the hardened material, strong forces were applied to the material and the formation of cracks in the material was observed. For this purpose, completely new, quantum-based measurement methods for crack observation were developed and used.

Project results

A particularly energy-efficient methodology for increasing the strength of aluminium alloys was developed, which can greatly increase the fatigue strength of recycled material with a secondary metal content of over 50 percent. The strength of the treated materials was tested by applying high stress. Crack formation in the material was investigated using quantum-based measurement methods that offer extremely high local resolution.

Further utilisation of project results

The project results are to be further developed in follow-up projects for application in an industrial context. Several projects have been started or proposed for this purpose. In addition, there have been a number of publications on both the processing route and the quantum-based measurement method. A Technical Readiness Level (TRL) of 4 was achieved for the methodological developments in the project.