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Academia and industry met at the 11th International Aluminium Conference this year held in The Netherlands to hear papers on sustainability in the use of aluminium in the major markets of construction and automotive as well as on joining, forming and casting.
Held every third year, the 11th INALCO (International Aluminium Conference) this year took place at the Technical University of Eindhoven (TU/e) in The Netherlands on 23-25 June.
Close to 60 papers were heard in two plenary sessions and three parallel sessions by 145 delegates from across the world. While by far the majority of delegates and presenters came from Europe, Japan was well represented with six presentations, China with two, Iran with two and USA with one. The dearth of North American attendees is somewhat surprising considering the previous lnalco event was held in Montreal as will be the event in 2013.
The theme, 'New Frontiers in Light Metals' was a little misleading since aluminium was almost exclusively focussed on with no papers dedicated to magnesium or titanium. However, this is largely justified by aluminium being the second largest engineering metal in use, after steel, with close to 40Mt of primary production and the same amount of secondary (remelted Al) produced in 2008, according to the International Aluminium Institute (IAI).
Technical sessions covered the themes of Advanced Joining, Architecture, Automotive & Transport, Materials Technology (extrusion and casting), Structural Design and surfaces.
A morning was also spent visiting one of three aluminium using companies, Bayards Constructions which fabricates aluminium, the Aluminium Centrum which specialises in architecture and Bruijis Metal Casting.
Following a welcome by the Dean of Architecture TU/e, Jan Westra and an introduction by co-chairman of the event, Prof Laurens Katgerman of Technical University of Delft, the first presentation was made by Patrick de Schrynmakers, General Manager European Aluminium Association (EAA), Brussels. Like some other delegates, Mr Schrynmakers had 'hot footed' it from the CRU World Aluminium Conference in Oslo (see this issue) and drew on some of the key points presented there for his presentation - unfortunately one of the few not included in the excellent published proceedings. He was able to report from the Oslo meeting that the recovery was gaining momentum and the outlook was positive, but this was...