Making aluminum car parts a reality.

Resurrecting dismissed technology of the 1950s and 1960s, an Ohio State University researcher can form car parts out of sheet metal that stretches up to five times more than metal formed using standard molding techniques. The advance promises to make aluminum car parts - the goal of the modern auto industry - a reality within just a few years, according to Glenn Daehn, associate professor of materials science and engineering.

So far, aluminum automobile parts have been difficult and costly to fashion, and only the most expensive have incorporated many of them. Nevertheless, the demand is there. "The ultimate payoff would be to make aluminum parts because they are lighter, but they are more difficult to form than steel parts. This technology allows us to form aluminum components much more easily and cheaply than conventional means.

"We're observing 'hyperplasticity.'" Daehn and his collaborators coined the term to describe both the enhanced flexibility metals show when stretched to shape with "high-rate" forming processes and the quickness of the methods.

In the lab, Daehn compared the results of forming parts using conventional means, which simply stretch sheets of metal between male and female die, to forming parts by using the highrate way. His tests with aluminum, steel, and copper showed that the high-rate methods can result in two to five times higher forming limits in these metals - that is, the metal is stretched to two to five times greater levels before it reaches its limits and tears.

In the...