Constellium Reports for Duty at AUSA 2024

Constellium recently attended the Annual Meeting of the United States Army Association (AUSA). It was exciting for the North America Defense team to see Constellium’s armored solutions featured on vehicles,  talk to attendees about how we work with defense customers, and experience new solutions that will appear on future vehicles. 

Over the past decade, aluminium armor plates have become increasingly common in military vehicles thanks to their combination of strength and low density.  Aluminium’s lighter weight helps improve vehicle speed and cross-country mobility compared to steel-hulled vehicles with the same level of protection. Better mobility allows for greater responsiveness in battle and more maneuverability, which combine to lower a vehicle’s vulnerability and improve its occupants’ survivability.

Lighter weight reduces fuel consumption, increases operational range, and allows access to more of the battlefield than heavier vehicles due to weight limitations along roads and bridges. This lower weight also increases the number of vehicles that can be carried into remote areas by air, allowing commanders to rapidly concentrate the forces they need with more aircraft available to carry supplies and ammunition.

Constellium’s ability to reduce complexity is key to creating streamlined, aluminium thick plate solutions with the US Army and Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Constellium Ravenswood has moved the MIL-SPEC materials requirements from 3” to 10.5”, allowing GCV OEMs to move away from multipiece welding configurations. In one instance, Constellium reduced the piece count from 63 individual welded pieces to 14 monolithic pieces, machined to a single-piece configuration, which resulted in the elimination of 95 welds. 

Each weld is a potential weak point in a combat vehicle due to the heat affected zone. This new development of technology allows for a safer vehicle for soldiers. Eliminating welds (part distortion) and moving toward monolithic machined parts out of a single plate allows for increased throughput in final assembly, providing the ability to produce vehicles at a much faster rate (up to 20 - 25% more monthly). By decreasing the level of complexity in our approach, this results in cost, time, and storage savings for our customers, all while providing safer solutions for our customers. Constellium is working with the United States Department of Defense to develop the next generation of aluminium alloys, which play a critical role in national security.