Large section aluminum profiles for rail transit

Aluminum has the advantages of low density, high strength, corrosion resistance and good processability. It is an excellent material for making large section aluminum profiles for large parts of rail transit vehicles. With the development of high-speed trains and urban rail vehicles towards high-speed, light-weight, energy-saving and beautiful, the application of aluminum alloy structural profiles in this area also shows its unique advantages. In the future, the rail transit industry will still have a great demand for large section aluminum profiles. In the rail transit industry, compared with the steel structure car body, aluminum structure car body has the advantages of good weight reduction, good shock absorption and low life cycle cost. It is one of the important ways for rail transit vehicles to realize lightweight, save power consumption and high-speed operation. Compared with the steel structure car body, the aluminum structure car body can reduce the weight by more than 40%. When the traction force is certain, the aluminum vehicle can increase the traffic volume by 10%, and save energy by 9.6% - 12.5%; The maintenance cost of aluminum vehicles is only 1 / 2 of that of steel vehicles; The recycling value of aluminum vehicles after scrapping is 4 times that of steel vehicles.

Large section aluminum profiles are mainly used for large parts of car body on rail vehicles. At present, rail vehicles using aluminum alloy car bodies include urban rail transit (including subway, urban light rail, maglev train, etc.) and high-speed rail multiple units (domestic "harmony" multiple units except CRH1 are stainless steel car bodies, CRH2, CRH3, CRH5 are large hollow profile aluminum alloy car bodies), C80 coal trucks also use aluminum alloy car bodies, and the car bodies mostly use large-section aluminum profiles.

In the actual production of rail transit vehicles, large extruders with different extrusion tonnage can produce aluminum profiles at different parts of the car body. In order to meet the mechanical properties and cross-sectional area of aluminum profiles for car bodies, with reference to German DIN standards, it is necessary to reduce the number of car body welding and improve manufacturing efficiency. Therefore, this kind of large section aluminum extrusion is generally produced on extruders above 50Mn.

As of 2017, 125 large extruders with more than 50Mn have been put into operation in China. The total production capacity of these large extruders is more than 500000 tons, including 40 with extrusion force ≥ 100MN. There are 7 domestic enterprises that can produce large section aluminum profiles for rail vehicles: Chalco aluminum, Liyuan Aluminum Co., Ltd., Liaoning Zhongwang group, Nanshan aluminum profile Co., Ltd., Shandong jungle Aluminum Co., Ltd., Southwest Aluminum (Group) Co., Ltd., Zhengzhou Mingtai Jiaotong new materials Co., Ltd., all of which have large extruders of more than 50Mn and related supporting facilities.