1. Historical review

Aluminum, like other technically pure (base) metals (99.5% or more), has poor mechanical properties. This is why, from the end of the 19th century, metallurgists sought to improve many of its properties by adding other metals and metalloids, mainly silicon (see Note 1), to obtain alloys.

In fact, aluminum metallurgy can be considered to have really only begun with Alfred Wilm's discovery, in 1907, of the structural hardening of aluminum alloys with copper. , less than 20 years after the start of its industrial production by igneous electrolysis (see Note 2...