Constellium announced the results of its collaborative research project ALuminum Intensive Vehicle Enclosures (ALIVE). Constellium’s University Technology Center (UTC) at Brunel University London was the lead partner of the project focused on developing structural aluminum battery enclosures for electric vehicles. The £15-million project, half funded by UK government subsidies through its Advanced Propulsion Center (APC), began in 2020.

The consortium, comprising six industrial partners (BMW, Constellium, EXPERT Technologies Group, Innoval Technology, Powdertech and Volvo) and two university technology partners (BCAST (Brunel University London) and WMG (University of Warwick)), developed novel aluminum battery enclosure designs meeting challenging performance, manufacturing, weight, and cost targets for the project’s OEM partners, BMW and Volvo.

The project’s multidisciplinary team investigated and implemented a wide range of joining and forming technologies in combination with Constellium’s family of high-strength and high-crash alloys, Constellium HSA6 and Constellium HCA6, to create high-performance, lightweight, and cost-efficient aluminum designs.

The project also enabled the creation of a full-scale battery enclosure prototyping line. Several different 1:1 scale prototypes have been built for a variety of vehicle platforms, passing a range of severe testing requirements such as side pole crash/side impact, bottom intrusion, acceleration, shock, vibration, and leak testing.

The team also demonstrated the superior performance of coated aluminum solutions for fire resistance. The battery enclosure designs and associated manufacturing technologies developed as part of the ALIVE project enabled the team to save between 12% to 35% of the weight, depending on the design, compared to existing OEM aluminum and steel designs while meeting or exceeding performance targets.

ALIVE also supported the development of cost models to quantify manufacturing costs and minimize capital expenditures to support future industrialization decision-making processes. Given the rapidly evolving EV market, the team had to adapt quickly and develop various technologies supporting OEMs’ structural, non-structural, module-to-pack, and cell-to-pack battery enclosure strategies. Additionally, the consortium proposed a full cradle-to-grave Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), validated by an external panel, demonstrating the benefit of aluminum solutions over ancillary steel designs.

The Constellium team is already adapting the design philosophies to other enclosure types, such as chest battery packs for trucks and SUVs, as well as validating the use of high-recycled content alloys in such demanding aluminum product forms to further improve their carbon footprint.

Constellium designed and produced the aluminum extrusions for the project at its University Technology Center (UTC) at Brunel University London, its dedicated center of excellence for developing and testing aluminum extrusions and prototype automotive components at scale.