Structural Aluminium Industry

Abstract

The paper opens with a brief description of the general trend of development in aluminium industry pictured against world production , price trends and the rating of potentialities of some of the important European countries . The major portion of the description centres round the mode of application of aluminium alloys in structures commonly met with in civil engineering practice with special reference to building construction. A survey is made of the uses of aluminium in different engineering industries in terms of percentage production of that country in order to give an indication of the existing and potential markets.Since the general index of a country ' s achievement is measured by its per capita production, an analysis on per capita production is made for different countries of the world including India, both for aluminium alloys as well as for iron and steel, in which is also incorporated the per capita production of electrical energy in kWh for U.K., U.S.A.,Canada and India to give a very striking indication of the vast strides still necessary to be made bythis country to stand in the front rank of industrial nations. In dealing with the actual applications, the potentialities of Light alloys in civil engineering structures are brought out through an explanation of their inherent characteristics . To evaluate the trend of industrial production in the field of building construction , the uses of light alloys are subdivided into six categories and the relative merits of each one discussed together with an indication of the manner in which production should proceed.It is shown that in India it would be futile at this stage to produce completely prefabricated aluminium houses , but to utilize aluminium components for the production of rural and industrial structures would be quite feasible and economical . A survey is made of the future of structural aluminium, incorporating ideas on rational methods of design based on the intrinsic characteristic of the material and emphasizing the inadequacy of merely copying conventional steel design. The paper forms a compact appraisal of one of the important facets of the Indian aluminium industry with specialreference to structural engineering work, and forms a stepping -stone for future development in this field,