Alcoa [AA] on Monday said it has manufactured the world’s largest single-piece forged aluminum hull for combat vehicles in a development that offers greater blast protection from improvised explosive threats and significantly lower costs.
“It’s a game changer,” Eric Roegner, president of Alcoa Defense, told Defense Daily during the annual Association of the United State Army conference. He said the “Holy Grail” is being able to manufacture monolithic structures and the work it is doing for the Army on the forged hull is based on the company’s experience with aerospace forging on programs like
Airbus Group’s A380 passenger jet and the Defense Department’s F-35 strike fighter.
Working together for the past year on the initiative, Alcoa Defense and the Army Research Laboratory co-designed the monolithic hull, which is modeled for a Bradley Fighting Vehicle but can be scaled to smaller and more complicated shapes, Roegner said. The Army has done one blast test of the hull and Roegner said that while he can’t discuss initial results he is “smiling” about them. More blast testing is planned, he said.
The forged single-piece aluminum hull is half the weight of current hulls and provides about twice the blast protection because it eliminates welds, which add weight and weak points along the seems, Roegner said. He also said that forging allows designers to put more metal where it’s needed and less where it isn’t.
Once the hull design is proven, Alcoa plans to build out other assemblies with forged, single-piece designs, Roegner said.
The lower weight associated with the single hull and potentially other forged assemblies are expected to lead to lower operating costs through fuel efficiencies. Eliminating or reducing the number of welds reduces assembly times and production steps, further cutting costs.
Roegner said that the company is working out a roadmap to get its forged hull onto a program. The hull is designed for large, heavy armored multipurpose vehicles like a Bradley, M113 or even a M109 Paladin artillery system, he said. The hull could be used on vehicle retrofits or new production, he said.
The hull program is part of the Army’s Affordable Protection from Objective Threats Manufacturing Technology program that is designed to bolster defenses against threats like improvised explosive devices using affordable and advanced manufacturing technologies.