Today, people have intimate contact with aluminum every day, and few think about this material. For the United States alone, it consumes 100 billion aluminum beverage cans each year. About 60% of these aluminum cans are recycled and made into new aluminum supplies.
In the automotive industry, the use of aluminum as a priority material has made significant progress. The use of aluminum in general modern motor vehicles has grown more than before. Radiators, engine blocks, transmission housings, wheels, body panels, bumpers, space frames, engine mounts, drive shafts, and suspension frames are all made of aluminum.
In addition to cars, aluminum and more are used in our homes and office buildings. Including window frames, sinks, wires, exterior panels, roofs. Usually furniture is also made of aluminum alloy.
To study aluminum in today's world, it should be remembered that on December 17th, 1903, the North Carolina Brothers took Kitt Hawk’s previous test flight and the engine was made of aluminum. If aluminum cannot be used in the development of the aircraft industry, the aircraft we know today will not exist. The extremely high carrying weight ratio of aluminum is the reason why today's giant aircraft can fly with relatively small engines.
Although aluminum is abundant in many other parts of the world, the United States is the world’s largest aluminum producer. Containers and packaging are the larger markets for aluminum; transportation (cars, trucks, airplanes and trains) is the second largest market. Followed by the construction industry. Today, aluminum is everywhere from cooking utensils used in the kitchen to signs on highways. Aluminum is so common in daily life that it is conceivable that aluminum has existed for a long time. In reality, the conversion of aluminum ore into aluminum that we are familiar with and use every day has recently emerged. Industrial production of aluminum began in the late 19th century, which made this material later in common metals.
The story behind the metal aluminum
Aluminum has been one of the 92 metal elements that have existed since the Earth was formed. About 8% of the crust consists of aluminum, and only oxygen (47%) and silicon (27%) exceed it. Although aluminum was abundant, aluminum did not separate from the ore state until the Iron Age 2000. After thousands of years (after physical and chemical activities), the ancient aluminum-silicon rock sinks into the ground and becomes extremely fine small particles. These particles form aluminum clay, and the original ceramic is made of it. In the broadband around the earth, hard rain and high temperatures are baked, compacted clays and other large precipitates that form aluminum deposits. The ore was discovered earlier in Les Baux in France and was called "iron aluminoflox". When this ore is refined, aluminum oxides, also known as bauxite, are formed.
Thousands of years later, people wanted to invent something similar to the aluminum metal we are now familiar with, but it was unsuccessful. The main reason for the slow development of this metal is that it is difficult to extract from the ore. It is in a compound that binds closely to oxygen atoms. This compound, unlike iron, does not decrease when it reacts with carbon.
Between 1808 and 1812, the Englishman Humphrey Davy suspected that the new iron was mixed with iron extracted from natural ore. He first devoted himself to this research. Davy named the new element “aluminum,†which was extracted from its bisulfate alum. Ancient Egyptians have long been familiar with the use of alum in dyes. In 1825, Hans Christian Orsted succeeded in making aluminum on chemical scales in Denmark. Not long after, Friedrich Wohler also succeeded in this in Germany. Later, in 1854, the French Henri-Etienne Sainte Clair Deville (the person who named the ore as "bauxite") found a way to produce aluminum through chemical processes. Even if several factories were built to make this new metal, it was so expensive that at the 1855 Paris Expo, samples were placed next to the French Crown Jewels for display to the public.
After more than 30 years, an economical saving process for producing aluminum emerged. In 1886, a magical coincidence, two people (one in France and the other in the United States) also discovered the electrolytic process for making aluminum, which is still in use today.
Charles Martin Hall of the United States was interested in producing aluminum and was a student at Oberlin University. After graduating in 1885 he continued to use the university's laboratory and invented his method eight months later. He eventually invented a viable electrolysis process in which molten alum was formed when the purified alum was dissolved in a soluble salt called cryolite and electrolysis was carried out in direct current. When Hall applied for a patent for his craft, he discovered a French patent that was essentially the same as the one he invented and was invented by Paul LT Heroult.
This process is now called the Hall-Heroult process. Charles Martin Hall several times wanted investors to be interested in promoting this invention, but failed. Later, he received support from Alfred E.Hunt and several of his friends. Together they set up Pittsburgh Refinery (later to become Alcoa, ALCOA). Knowing the potential of aluminum, Hall created an industry in the United States that contributes to the development of other industries, particularly aircraft and automobile manufacturing.
Around 1888, the industrial production of aluminum began to prevail in the United States and Europe at the same time. # - Hall's process was used in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Heroult's process was used in Neuhausen, Switzerland. By 1914, the Hall-Heroult process had caused the incredible drop in the cost of aluminum. Aluminum, a precious metal that was once used for exquisite jewellery, is now widely used and has many advantages.
Later, aluminum production increased exponentially. In 1918, production reached 180,000 tons. Since then, aluminum has enjoyed steady growth over the long term. From the middle of the 1970s onwards, aluminum production and consumption increased by an average of more than 8% per year. In 1952, the total consumption of aluminum in the Western world reached 2 million tons, reaching 20 million tons in 1989. Aluminum is considered to be the material of the future.
Welding aluminum development
After finding a suitable method for producing cost-effective materials such as aluminum, the next step is to process and improve this basic material.
Pure aluminum has some unique and important features. For example, corrosion resistance and electrical conductivity. However, since pure aluminum has a relatively low carrying rate, it is not a preferable material for structural welding assembly. It was soon discovered that the addition of relatively small amounts of alloying elements in pure aluminum caused a great change in the properties of aluminum. Production depends on the first batch of aluminum alloy, one of which is aluminum-copper alloy. Around 1910, the hardening of the precipitates in the alloy family was discovered. The benefits of many of these precipitate-hardening alloys in the developing aircraft industry are immediate. Followed by aluminum-copper alloys, many other alloys have also developed. Studies have found that various physical and mechanical characteristics of pure aluminum have changed significantly by adding elements such as copper (Cu), manganese (Mn), magnesium (Mg), silicon (Si), and zinc (Zn) and these elements. . Many of these new alloys match the load-carrying capacity of a good-quality carbon steel—one third of the weight.
The development of many new aluminum alloys suitable for structural applications raises the question of finding the right connection method. The first step is to have the right parent material. However, if there is no practical way to connect this material, it is not practical to use this material as an assembly material.
The development of aluminum alloy welding process is different from that of carbon steel. Since the original aluminum alloy has many elements and each alloy element has a different influence on the weldability of the base metal, it is necessary to develop many different filler alloys to adapt to these different alloy elements. For example, some of the original aluminum alloys have special chemical properties that are designed for specific suitable mechanical and physical characteristics and do not have good weldability.
The chemical properties of these alloys are not good for solidification and are prone to solidification cracks. In order to develop a suitable welding process without producing cracked welds, the susceptibility to solidification cracking of each different alloy must be mastered. This welding development work is a big project in itself. Much of the work was done by the aluminum base material manufacturers because they knew the reliable welding methods and processes of aluminum, and also the aluminum assemblers. They also knew the potential of this new material and hoped to use it. The two pioneers in the development of welding in the United States are Alcoa (Alcoa) and Kaiser Alchemy, both of which have publications; the welding of ALCOA aluminum was published earlier in 1954 (see Figure 1) and welding of Kaiser Aluminum was published earlier in 1967.
In the era of modern industrial world competition, structural metals must have good weldability. Older welding technologies suitable for aluminum include oxyfuel gas welding and resistance welding. Aluminum arc welding is mainly limited to SMAW (manual welding arc), sometimes called MMA. This welding process uses a tubular electrode. It was soon discovered that this process is not suitable for welding aluminum. One of the main problems is the corrosion caused by flux residues, especially in the filler welds. The flux remains behind the welds and promotes corrosion of the welds.
The breakthrough of aluminum as a structural metal was achieved with the advent of inert gas welding processes in the 1940s. For example, GMAW (Gas Metal Arc Welding), also known as MIG (Melting Inert Gas Shielded Arc Welding); GTAW (Gas Tungsten Arc Welding), also known as TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas Shielded Arc Welding). With the welding process in which inert gas is used to protect the molten aluminum, it is possible to produce high-quality, high-capacity welds in all directions at high speeds without corrosion.
Today, aluminum and aluminum alloys have good solderability using a variety of techniques and welding processes. The two more recent processes are laser beam welding (LBW) and friction stir welding (FSW). However, the GTAW/TIG and GMAW/MIG welding processes are still more popular.
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