Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

The globalization of the metals industry is resulting in extreme competitive pressures on the Canadian metals sector. As a result, there is increased awareness by Canadian companies such as Alcan that they must focus on high valued added products. The current proposal is a collaboration between Alcan and UBC to address this need. This project examines extrusion of 3xxx aluminum alloys which are used in a variety of applications but are of particular significance for the manufacture of heat exchangers used in the transportation sector. Currently, there is very limited knowledge in the literature about the processing of these alloys, especially in comparison to traditional aluminum extrusion alloys. The primary objective of this work is to develop knowledge based models for this process which will aid industry in improving the properties and quality of these alloys. The approach taken will be a combination of focused experiments and state of the art modelling techniques. The scope of the work will start with industrially produced as-cast alloys and then encompass the following aspects of the process: homogenization of the alloys, hot extrusion, room temperature deformation and final annealing. The benefits to Canada include i) the development and transfer of specific knowledge to the industrial partner, Alcan, ii) the education of 4 graduate students (2 MASc, 2 PhD), one research associate and one research engineer (the need for HQP has been identified by the industry) and iii) the expansion of internationally leading expertise on the physical metallurgy of aluminum alloys at UBC.