Aluminum Alloy Is One of the Best Materials for Surfboards
Surfing is a popular summer water sport. But do you know what surfboards are made of? Most surfboards are made of fiberglass reinforced aluminum-matrix composites, which are strong but not as affordable or recyclable. One of the best materials for surfboards is aluminum alloy.
The Trial to Use Aluminum as the Material
According to foreign media reports, a surfboard company in Utopik in Brittany, France, has been designing and manufacturing aluminum sandwich surfboards since 2020. The company official said that its bridge core hull box plate products are made of aluminum alloy and wood. The wood is eco-friendly and comes from non-invasive fast-growing trees that absorb carbon dioxide at a high rate. And the surfboard can be recycled in a closed-circuit cycle, the recovery capacity is much higher than the current recovery rate of polymer surfboards. The aluminum surfboard entered test production in June 2021. It can be predicted that the entry of aluminum alloy will bring great changes to the future of the surfing industry.
The Main Problem in the Usage
However, the aluminum alloy used to make surfboards also has its own special requirements. Surfing is mostly carried out on the coast, and sea water is a highly corrosive medium, which puts high requirements on the corrosion resistance of materials. Aluminum and aluminum alloy surface has an oxide film, so that the material has a high corrosion resistance. Those that can improve the density of the oxide film, increase the thickness of the oxide film and improve the insulation performance of the oxide film are helpful to improve the corrosion resistance of aluminum and aluminum alloys. On the contrary, any factor that reduces the effectiveness of the oxide film, whether mechanical or chemical, will cause the corrosion resistance of aluminum and aluminum alloys to decline sharply.
The Al-Mg Series Alloy Is the Most Suitable to Solve the Problem
The corrosion resistance of aluminum alloys in alkaline solutions and seawater decreases in the following order: Al-Mg alloy, industrial pure aluminum, Al-Mn alloy, Al-Mg-Si alloy, Al-Zn-Mg alloy, Al-Si alloy, Al-Zn-Cu-Mg alloy, Al-Cu-Mg alloy, Al-Cu alloy. However, only when the alloy sensitive to spallation corrosion, intergranular corrosion or stress corrosion cracking has been heat treated to remove these sensitivities, the above corrosion resistance order is established, and this order is also not rigorous. According to this rough order, the Al-Mg series alloy, that is, the 5000 series alloy, has the strongest corrosion resistance to seawater. Therefore, the author recommends the use of type 5083, 5054 and 5454 alloys to manufacture surfboards.