Overview

Dr. Ramona Tosone, Leiterin des Center for Material Innovation der AMAG hat im Rahmen der diesjährigen ALUMINIUM Messe in Düsseldorf den erstmals verliehenen Women With Metal - ALUMINIUM Award in der Kategorie „Sustainable and Innovative Leader“ erhalten.

In the modern business world, precise and consistent data lays the foundation for sound decisions and successful strategies. It plays a key role in controlling, because the indicators calculated in this context are vital for managing and evaluating a company’s performance. But what happens when the figures for a given indicator vary in different reports, despite being based on the same data? Confusion, inefficient processes and, in the worst case scenario, wrong decisions. AMAG’s Controlling department engaged with the topic of efficient data management at an early stage. In 2012, it introduced LucaNet: a system that facilitates centralized access to indicators.

The world of heat exchangers is evolving rapidly, with new and increasingly complex geometries emerging all the time. At the same time, there is a growing focus on cost-efficient solutions that are also environmentally friendly. This makes the development of a flux-free brazing material for controlled atmosphere brazing an incredibly exciting and important challenge.

Energy transition
Decentralized electrification of infrastructure has a decisive role to play in our society’s pursuit of climate neutrality. Many electrical technologies are expierence a real boom, from the integration of solar panels and battery energy storage systems in residential construction projects to charging infrastructure and batteries in e-mobility. All of these applications have a key component in common: cost-efficient electrical conductors with low electrical resistance and excellent processing properties. These conductors are often referred to as bus bars.

Life cycle analyses and carbon footprints
A life cycle analysis (LCA) is a systematic, standardized evaluation of a product’s environmental impact. Ideally, an LCA should take account of all material and energy flows. The carbon footprint of a product (CFP) represents the conclusion of an environmental audit of the greenhouse gas emissions generated throughout a product’s life cycle.

At AMAG’s Ranshofen site, the impacts of climate change are already tangible and quantifiable. This becomes evident when looking at the change in a variety of climatic metrics in Ranshofen, especially over the last two decades.

Rain is hardly unusual in the autumn. In 2023, however, autumn brought a very different kind of rain to AMAG - with awards raining down on the company. In the space of a few weeks, AMAG received four awards in different disciplines, from sustainability to intelligent data use, and from reporting to outstanding economic performance.

As extensively detailed in AluReport 01/2023, AMAG components has drawn up a master plan, charting the future direction of the company. This masterplan, which will be implemented in several phases at the company’s Übersee and Karlsruhe sites, aims to improve all operational KPIs with the aim of giving customers the best possible service.

From hoods and doors to fenders and deck lids, AMAG automotive sheets have wide-ranging automotive applications and meet numerous requirements. In addition to mechanical and forming characteristics, these sheets possess excellent corrosion resistance, process-stable weldability and bondability combined with outstanding surface quality for defect-free painting.

The youngest member of the AMAG CrossAlloy® family, CrossAlloy®.68, is a textbook example of the adaptation of material characteristics using thermomechanical processes and structural control. In the pursuit of recycling-friendly wrought aluminium alloys, a typical 6xxx alloy was supplemented with a high iron content, as is common in 8xxx alloys used for foil applications. The experiment provided some interesting observations.

Even though AlMgSi(Cu) alloys have long since become standard materials for wide-ranging applications in the field of lightweight construction, the micro­structural processes that occur during their production continue to raise fascinating questions. For many years, the focus has been on cluster formation and its impact on artificial aging and the formation of hardening precipitates [1,2]. There are also new and extensive studies  concentrating on the early stages of over-aging [3,4]. In contrast, however, the mechanism by which stable phases develop has been the subject of considerably less attention to date, and information on the topic remains inconclusive [5-8]. In some ways, this is hardly surprising, given that stable phases in AlMgSi(Cu) alloys are typically undesirable in the finished product, as they do not make an appreciable contribution to material strength.

The hot rolling process has a significant influence on the formability of Al-Mg-Si sheets (6xxx alloys) used in automotive bodywork. AMAG researchers collaborating with scientific partner institutes have identified a physical cause for this connection in the key AA6016 alloy: pure silicon precipitates grow at grain boundaries during and after hot rolling. If they grow too large, they do not disappear completely during solution heat treatment and reduce the material’s formability. To prevent this, AMAG uses a specifically developed material model that pre-calculates the growth of silicon precipitates. This computer-based model rapidly optimizes hot rolling pass schedules to achieve the best possible formability in sheets for the automotive industry.