'Lightweighting' the Key to Development of High Performance, Cost-Effective Castings and Global Prosperity

摘要

On a recent sojourn into some Alcoa history, I came across a quote from an article in a 1900 trade journal that contained one of the earliest proposals for application of the lightweight metal in the transportation industry...wagon frames. From these 19th century beginnings, we are producing today the first commercial castings for automotive frame applications. These vacuum die cast nodes lend stiffness to the Audi A-8's multiproduct spaceframe. They are produced in a new plant in Soest, Germany, that is paving new ground in the development of casting technology. And for another transportation application, this one in the air, we developed and produced one of the world's largest, thin-walled structural castings...the F-16 s vertical stabilizer.