Jun 19 2007
Hydro has introduced two new aluminium alloys, designed to help the heat exchange industry in its work to replace environmentally harmful refrigerants in mobile air-conditioning systems. The alloys HA9108 and HA9118 are as much as 100 percent stronger than their predecessors.
As a major worldwide supplier, Hydro has been developing and improving extruded tube alloys for automotive heat exchange applications for the past 10 years. Improved functional properties, such as higher strength related to wall thickness reductions, are currently in focus.
When in service, automotive heat exchangers are exposed to a corrosive environment. Consequently, when the market also requires wall thickness reductions and the possible introduction of carbon dioxide as air-conditioning refrigerant, the demand on the alloy and the design against corrosion receive the highest attention.
The new alloys represent the latest development.
"The most basic point is that these alloys improve the range of the higher-strength materials available in the market," says Salvador Biosca, who is responsible for Hydro's aluminium precision tubing operations.
HA9108 is an MPE – or, multi-port extrusion - tube alloy. Test results show that the alloy provides a substantial increase in post-braze strength compared to standard alloys, such as EN AW-3102. Hydro is targeting the other new alloy - HA9118 - as a high-strength material for header tank/manifold applications.
Hydro has chosen the names HA9108 and HA9118 to better distinguish the company's brand and increase its competitive edge in the heat exchange business. Both are in the family of standard 3000 alloys.
"The development of these alloys underlines our commitment to the heat exchange business," says Biosca.
Presented at VTMS
Hydro engineer Arvid Espedal introduced the new alloys to industry experts at the Vehicle Thermal Management Systems (VTMS 8) Conference in Nottingham, UK. The biennial conference covered the latest research and technological advances in heat transfer and in the management of all thermal systems within vehicles."We will continue to drive this development with regard to CO2 applications," says Espedal.
A link to the detailed presentation, which is entitled "New extruded tube alloys for CO2 MAC applications," is available in the right-hand column.
Hydro, the largest aluminium company in Europe, is the global market leader in providing extruded and rolled aluminium solutions for automotive heat exchanger solutions. Our tubes are found mainly in applications such as condensers and evaporators for air-conditioning systems as well as liquid lines for air conditioning, heater cores and radiators for engine cooling systems, charge air coolers and other cooling systems.
New alloys in brief
- HA9108 is an MPE tube alloy that provides a significant increase in post-braze strength compared to standard alloys, such as EN AW-3102. The alloy’s improvement in post-braze Yield Tensile Stress (YTS) is about 100 percent, while, correspondingly, the improvement in Ultimate Tensile Stress (UTS) is approximately 30 percent.
- HA9118, an extruded tube alloy, is a high-strength header tank/manifold alloy. When measured against the standard EN AW-3103, the new alloy boasts an improvement of 50 percent in YTS and 15 percent in UTS.
- Both of the new alloys are within the 3000 alloy family.