Spray Rolling Aluminum Strip
Spray forming is a competitive low-cost alternative to ingot metallurgy for manufacturing ferrous and non-ferrous alloy shapes. It produces materials with a reduced number of processing steps, while maintaining materials properties, with the possibility of near-net-shape manufacturing. However, there are several hurdles to large-scale commercial adoption of spray forming: 1) ensuring strip is consistently flat, 2) eliminating porosity, particularly at the deposit/substrate interface, and 3) improving material yield. Through this program, a new strip/sheet casting process, termed spray rolling, has been developed, which is an innovative manufacturing technique to produce aluminum net-shape products. Spray rolling combines the benefits of twin-roll casting and conventional spray forming, showing a promising potential to overcome the above hurdles associated with spray forming. Spray rolling requires less energy and generates less scrap than conventional processes and, consequently, enables the development of materials with lower environmental impacts in both processing and final products. Spray Rolling was developed as a collaborative project between the University of California-Davis, the Colorado School of Mines, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, and an industry team. The following objectives of this project were achieved: (1) Demonstration of the feasibility of the spray rolling process at the bench-scale level and evaluation of the materials properties of spray rolled aluminum strip alloys; and (2) Demonstration of 2X scalability of the process and documentation of technical hurdles to further scale up and initiate technology transfer to industry for eventual commercialization of the process.
- Research Organization:
- University of California, Irvine, CA
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Industrial Technologies (OIT) - (EE-20)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FC36-00ID13816
- OSTI ID:
- 882024
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/ID/13816-1; TRN: US200716%%194
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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