Technical-economic evaluation of severe plastic deformation processing technologies—methodology and use case of lever-arm-shaped aircraft lightweight components

This paper presents an innovative methodology for integrated technical-economic evaluations of extrusion technologies and aims to show potentials of severe plastic deformation (SPD) technologies. Extrusion technologies and processes such as SPD have a strong influence on properties of aluminium-based lightweight materials. Hence, research and development regarding such processes may contribute to gain competitive advantages for companies as they can differentiate from competitors by offering or processing materials with distinctive properties (e.g. light weight and high yield strength) causing customer’s benefit. Consequently, it is of great importance for companies of the aluminium extrusion industry to select technologies that are promising from both a technical and an economic point of view. Using the integrated methodology, selected SPD technologies are analysed. The application to the use case of lever-arm-shaped aircraft components shows that these technologies bear technical as well as considerable economic potentials: extrusion at room temperature can increase yield strength by 25% compared to commercial extrusion at a similar level of manufacturing costs and the monetary appraisal of the benefits of lower weight for the users of aircraft components indicates a significant economic potential of extrusion at room temperature.