Rio Tinto Alcan

Departement de genie chimique, Universite Laval Quebec, QC, Canada National Creative Research Initiative Center for Functional Nanomaterials and Department of Chemistry (School of Molecular Science BK21), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Korea Present address Rio Tinto Alcan, Arvida Research and Development Centre, Jonquiere, QC, Canada... 

Document prepared with the kind collaboration of Y. Bertaud and P. Palau, engineers at the Rio Tinto Alcan Company, based in Voreppe, France... 

Series of AF 30 cells (300 000A) (Si Rio Tinto Alcan, with permission)... 

The Aluminum Company of America (known as Alcoa since 1999) was foimded in 1909 and became a msgor producer of aluminum by the HaU-Heroult process. Canada-based company Rio Tinto Alcan and Norvray-based Norsk Hydro are also msgor producers of aluminum. Msgnesium was first made commercially in Germany by I. G. Farben in the 1890 s, and later in the United States by Dow Chemical. In both instances, electrolysis of molten magnesium chloride was used to produce the magnesium. 

Alcoa and Rio Tinto Alcan are two of the largest aluminum producers in the world. Each has tens of thousands of employees spread over forty countries. Alcoa maintains a technical research center near Pittsburgh. In 2007, the company signed an agreement with a consortium of universities in Russia to sponsor research and development. Similar agreements were made in both India and China. Rio Tinto Alcan makes grants to several Canadian universities for research on aluminum production. 

For example. Ford carries out their Arizona Proving Ground Equivalent test where lap joints are subjected to 50oC, 90% RH conditions, with a 15 min immersion in salt solution 5 times a week to add a corrosive step to the cycle [36]. Rio Tinto Alcan has used a similar stress-humidity test (ISO 14615) to discriminate between durability of different adhesives and pretreatment. Here lap joints are exposed under load at 100% RH with temperature cycled hourly between 42°C and 48°C. 

Figure 11.10 shows the influence of load on the number of days to failure for joints made with Rio Tinto Alcan s AVT system. Clearly, load has a major effect on joint life. The results show that it is possible to achieve >3 years accelerated exposure life without failure, even with a load which is 2—3 times that normally seen in automotive structures. Although it is... 

---