AUTOMATION & ROBOTICS BY HITACHI HIGH-TECH ANALYTICAL SCIENCE
The rise of lighter
weight metals in the Automotive Industry
I recently presented a webinar on automotive trends changing material analysis and how you can be ready with Quality Digest magazine. During this webinar we asked a few questions, and it was interesting to find out that more than 50% of participants felt that new automotive trends related to light weighting were affecting their day to day operations already. However, over 75% said they were not yet using spark OES (optical emission spectrometer), LIBS (laser induced breakdown spectrometer) or XRF (X-ray fluorescence) PMI (positive material identification) analyzers to meet material specifications.
Aluminium and magnesium alloys have recently won favour in the automotive industry because they’re light, relatively low-cost and give many of the required properties. They can be formed into complex shapes including engine components, gearbox housings and structural parts. Even in the current environment, the legislation driving the need for lighter-weight metal is here to stay, and the development for these lighter-weight metals will continue, albeit possibly at a slower rate in the near-future until the economies around the world recover and manufacturing ramps up. Aluminium continues to dominate
The automotive industry has very exacting requirements for components – perhaps second only to aerospace. Safety is a huge issue and many components need to absorb energy on impact. Other components need to be structurally rigid and therefore the focus is more on strength. The role of incoming inspection and using spectrometers for metal analysis is becoming more and more important especially as new materials are introduced throughout the supply chain.
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ASIA PACIFIC METALWORKING
Coming in at around one third of the weight of steel, use of aluminium in cars has skyrocketed in recent years. That trend is set to continue for some time: by 2022 the average car is expected to contain almost 100kg of aluminium that have replaced heavier parts. This means that the automotive industry will make up a quarter of all aluminium consumption, that’s 30 million tonnes, by 2025.
