How is aluminium refined and how is it used for building materials?
Great Question! Aluminum is refined in many ways, the companies that produce will tell you the way they do it best. Aluminum by nature is a very soft metal. So when you make it to use for cars and airplanes, you add other metals to aluminum. The common varieties often used are 6061, and 7 thousand series. Aluminum has a lot of odd properties to it. Used correctly it can be very strong, but make no mistake, aluminum is not steel. Bridges are not built with aluminum, and there is a reason for this. First let us think of a bicycle made of aluminum. You cut the tubes, then have someone weld the bike together. When you weld aluminum, you create stresses, caused by the heat. After welding you would send the bike frame to be heat treated, this reduces the stresses, and makes the metal stronger. The problem with aluminum, and there is a problem (look for articles on the airforce retiring jets) is fatigue. Fatigue is basically when something has a stress applied to it and is damaged by the stre
