Vehicle Lightweighting: Challenges and Opportunities with Aluminum

Rising energy costs, consumer preferences and regulations drive requirements for fuel economy, performance, comfort, safety and cost of future automobiles. These conflicting situations offer challenges for vehicle lightweighting, for which aluminum applications are key. This paper describes product design needs and materials and process development opportunities driven by theoretical, experimental and modeling tools in the area of sheet and castings. Computational tools and novel experimental techniques used in their development are described. The paper concludes with challenges that lie ahead for pervasive use of aluminum and the necessary fundamental R&D that is still needed.