5. Aluminium alloy families

After a century of metallurgical studies and application development, eight families ("series" in English) of industrial aluminum wrought alloys have been adopted, based on five systems:

• aluminum-copper ;

• aluminum-manganese ;

• aluminum-silicon ;

• aluminum-magnesium ;

• aluminum-zinc.

For the sake of convenience, these families include unalloyed aluminum (1000 family), and other alloys, the 8000 family, made up of alloys rich in iron and, possibly, nickel.

These eight families can be divided into two distinct groups in terms of curing method (see table 8...