Reducing Weight for Transportation Applications: Technology Challenges and Opportunities

Today’s land, sea and air transportation industries — as a business necessity — are focused on technology solutions that will make vehicles more sustainable in terms of energy, the environment, safety and affordability. Reducing vehicle weight is a key enabler for meeting these challenges as well as increasing payload and improving performance. The potential weight reductions from substituting lightweight metals (advanced high-strength steels, aluminum, magnesium and titanium alloys) are well established. For magnesium castings, weight savings of 60% have been reported [1]. The value of weight reduction depends on the transportation sector and ranges from about $5/kg saved for automobiles to over $500/kg saved for aircraft [2]. The challenge is to optimize the material properties and develop robust, high volume, manufacturing technologies and the associated supply chain to fabricate components and subsystems at the appropriate cost for each application.