Manufacturing Challenges to Reduce Weight in Transportation Applications

New solutions are needed to reduce the weight of the machines that move people and goods on land, sea and air.  The potential for reducing weight using high-strength steels, aluminum, titanium and magnesium alloys is well established.  Key is to achieve the weight reduction economically and ranges from about $5/kg saved for automobiles to over $500/kg saved for aircraft. This requires optimizing the material properties and developing robust, scalable manufacturing technologies.  Lightweight Innovations for Tomorrow (LIFT) was established to accelerate the adoption of advanced metallic structural components and serves as the bridge between basic research and final product commercialization.  Our industry partners in collaboration with an extensive network of universities and the national and federal laboratories are developing these advanced manufacturing processes.  This talk will provide on overview of LIFT and describe how advanced heat treating is playing an important role in our technology portfolio.