SIMULATION as ENABLER for FUTURE MATERIAL and PROCESS IMPROVEMENTS

The aircraft industry is facing a multitude of challenges to deliver growing production rates, high performance materials, cost effective manufacturing, and to meet increasing sustainability requirements. Aluminium suppliers are well positioned to fulfill these demands while permanently being pushed to develop improved solutions. The presentation will highlight how Novelis applies advanced virtual tools to take up successfully these challenges. The activities extend from alloy design, process optimization for new sheet and plate products, innovative component manufacturing methodologies such as roll forming, to the performance of the developed solutions in an aircraft application. Improved machining practices with reduced distortion shall be achieved based on digital twins describing the residual stress state of thick rolled, solution treated and quenched plates for structural parts.