The need to reduce the ecological footprint of water/land/air vehicles in this era of climate change requires pushing the limits regarding the development of lightweight structures and materials. This requires a thorough understanding of their thermomechanical behavior at several stages of the production chain. Moreover, during service, the response of lightweight alloys under the simultaneous influence of mechanical loads and temperature can determine the lifetime and performance of a multitude of structural components. The present Special Issue, comprising eight original research articles, is dedicated to disseminating current efforts around the globe aimed at advancing understanding of the thermomechanical behavior of structural lightweight alloys under processing or service conditions.

This monograph presents approaches to characterize inelastic behavior of materials and structures at high temperature. Starting from experimental observations, it discusses basic features of inelastic phenomena including creep, plasticity, relaxation, low cycle and thermal fatigue. The authors formulate constitutive equations to describe the inelastic response for the given states of stress and microstructure. They introduce evolution equations to capture hardening, recovery, softening, ageing and damage processes. Principles of continuum mechanics and thermodynamics are presented to provide a framework for the modeling materials behavior with the aim of structural analysis of high-temperature engineering components.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Mechanical Behaviour of Aluminium Alloys" that was published in Applied Sciences

The use of lightweight structures across several industries has become inevitable in today’s world given the ever-rising demand for improved fuel economy and resource efficiency. In the automotive industry, composites, reinforced plastics, and lightweight materials, such as aluminum and magnesium are being adopted by many OEMs at increasing rates to reduce vehicle mass and develop efficient new lightweight designs. Automotive weight reduction with high-strength steel is also witnessing major ongoing efforts to design novel damage-controlled forming processes for a new generation of efficient, lightweight steel components. Although great progress has been made over the past decades in understanding the thermomechanical behavior of these materials, their extensive use as lightweight solutions is still limited due to numerous challenges that play a key role in cost competitiveness. Hence, significant research efforts are still required to fully understand the anisotropic material behavior, failure mechanisms, and, most importantly, the interplay between industrial processing, microstructure development, and the resulting properties. This Special Issue reprint book features concise reports on the current status in the field. The topics discussed herein include areas of manufacturing and processing technologies of materials for lightweight applications, innovative microstructure and process design concepts, and advanced characterization techniques combined with modeling of material’s behavior.

Manufacturing, reduced to its simplest form, involves the sequencing of product forms through a number of different processes. Each individual step, known as an unit manufacturing process, can be viewed as the fundamental building block of a nation's manufacturing capability. A committee of the National Research Council has prepared a report to help define national priorities for research in unit processes. It contains an organizing framework for unit process families, criteria for determining the criticality of a process or manufacturing technology, examples of research opportunities, and a prioritized list of enabling technologies that can lead to the manufacture of products of superior quality at competitive costs. The study was performed under the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation and the Defense Department's Manufacturing Technology Program.

There is growing interest in light metallic alloys for a wide number of applications owing to their processing efficiency, processability, long service life, and environmental sustainability. Aluminum, magnesium, and titanium alloys are addressed in this Special Issue, however, the predominant role played by aluminum. The collection of papers published here covers a wide range of topics that generally characterize the performance of the alloys after manufacturing by conventional and innovative processing routes.

Aluminum Alloys: Structure and Properties is a reference book that provides a concise description of the practical aspects of structures and properties of aluminum alloys. The book first covers the traits of pure and commercial aluminum, which include the composition, physical and thermal properties, and radiation. Next, the text covers the various classifications of aluminum alloys, such as binary, ternary, and commercial alloys. The text will be of great use to metallurgical engineers, inorganic chemists, and other researchers and practitioners who deal with aluminum and its alloys.

Hot stamping is a hot drawing process which takes advantage of the polymorphic steel behavior to produce parts with a good strength-to-weight ratio. For the simulation of the hot stamping process, a nonlinear two-scale thermomechanical model is suggested and implemented into the FE tool ABAQUS. Phase transformation and transformation induced plasticity effects are taken into account. The simulation results regarding the final shape and residual stresses are compared to experimental findings.