Aluminum for armor?

I my TL, I am industrializing Kamerun, which has no coal but abundant hydroelectric, so I am going to look into this as the TL progresses. But I have very odd situation where many hundreds of millions of marks were spent on industrial infrastructure in a region with no coal. But since you can also make steel with electricity, I will probably not use aluminum in APC. Frames for airplanes, small river patrol boats, unarmored trucks, maybe few hundred ton ocean going boats, but APC looks like a real stretch. Aluminium production was taking off as the true big dams began to be built in the 1920's, and you can using Oregon and Washington state as an example. Once you have economic production of Aluminium, then you can think about someone funding the welding and other support technologies.


Are you trying to write a TL or something?

Common iron ores are oxides like magnetite and hematite, they have to be deoxified. And if you actually want to do industrial scale stuff you need a blast furnace for the basic pig iron making and then converters for turning it into steel. I really don't see a way to do it without using coal (coke) in a realistic way... I guess you could play with some really heavy oils which are used in addition to coke in some processes, but I don't think its realistic to do it wholly using oil. Besides it's nasty stuff you've got to preheat it to around 200C just to get it flowing its so thick stuff.

Steel is a mixture of iron and carbon and by controlling the carbon content and alloying elements you get the type of steel you want. Then after that you need to control the cooling, you can easily have different properties with same alloy using different heat treatments.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Common iron ores are oxides like magnetite and hematite, they have to be deoxified. And if you actually want to do industrial scale stuff you need a blast furnace for the basic pig iron making and then converters for turning it into steel. I really don't see a way to do it without using coal (coke) in a realistic way... I guess you could play with some really heavy oils which are used in addition to coke in some processes, but I don't think its realistic to do it wholly using oil. Besides it's nasty stuff you've got to preheat it to around 200C just to get it flowing its so thick stuff.

Steel is a mixture of iron and carbon and by controlling the carbon content and alloying elements you get the type of steel you want. Then after that you need to control the cooling, you can easily have different properties with same alloy using different heat treatments.

You use direct reduced iron to make sponge iron, then it can be used in the electric arc smelter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponge_iron

http://www.sms-siemag.com/download/H3_303_EAF_E_Internet.pdf Look at page 8, Conarc furnace.


The problem with moving aluminum armor up a few decades is largely economic. You need a country that has abundant hydroelectric resources that has a abundance of electricity but lacks coal. The country must be prosperous enough to afford to build armor vehicles in large numbers and must have a compelling perceived need for domestic production. These conditions would be enough to move aluminum armor plating into the 1930's or 1940's, but then the problem is that there are rival technologies that can produce steel without using substantial amounts of coal, and these rival coalless steel technologies are older than the arc welding need for the aluminum armor. One can write a TL where these conditions exist, but to the best of my knowledge, these conditions were never one easy POD away from happening in OTL.
 
The real problem with Aluminium armour isn`t the armour itself but the development and proliferation of cheap anti-armour weapons such as the RPG7 and L72 LAW. Aluminium armoured vehicles such as the M113 were designed to withstand HMG fire and shell splinters but when they started taking RPG7 hits on a regular basis it became clear that more armour would be needed, to the point where aluminium armour offered few advantages over steel.
 
The real problem with Aluminium armour isn`t the armour itself but the development and proliferation of cheap anti-armour weapons such as the RPG7 and L72 LAW. Aluminium armoured vehicles such as the M113 were designed to withstand HMG fire and shell splinters but when they started taking RPG7 hits on a regular basis it became clear that more armour would be needed, to the point where aluminium armour offered few advantages over steel.

There's also the issue that HEAT rounds and ATGM/RPG warheads are often (always?) shaped charges, which can get aluminium to its ignition point. You don't always end up with your armour on fire, but there's enough photos of M113s with large holes burnt into their hulls to make me think it's an uncomfortably possible scenario.
 
Italy, perhaps?

Could they do it in the 1920's and 30's. I believe they have decent hydro power, and low coal reserves. Have Il Duce believe that aluminum shows a forward looking society?
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Could they do it in the 1920's and 30's. I believe they have decent hydro power, and low coal reserves. Have Il Duce believe that aluminum shows a forward looking society?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electric_energy_production_in_Italy_1883-2010.png

You also need Il Duce to push massive hydro projects as soon as he is in office. Brazil and Norway are also good choices, if some nationalism is thrown into the mix. Norway had supply/blockade issues in WW1, so maybe they could do a limited run APC, which Germany then could use in large numbers. Or maybe the Swiss.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electric_energy_production_in_Italy_1883-2010.png

You also need Il Duce to push massive hydro projects as soon as he is in office. Brazil and Norway are also good choices, if some nationalism is thrown into the mix. Norway had supply/blockade issues in WW1, so maybe they could do a limited run APC, which Germany then could use in large numbers. Or maybe the Swiss.

For Italy, maybe the kind of hydroelectric power needed could come from the Atlantropa project, with the dam from Tunisia to Sicily? I know, not plausible, but I had just connected those two things in my head and felt I had to share.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
For Italy, maybe the kind of hydroelectric power needed could come from the Atlantropa project, with the dam from Tunisia to Sicily? I know, not plausible, but I had just connected those two things in my head and felt I had to share.

You don't need anything that elaborate. Just a commitment to dam rivers to provide power to the economy. Once you have the dams, like the USA did in Washington state, the aluminum industry will tend to appear, and then the needed preconditions are there. A more interesting side effect might be Italy as a stronger air power.
 
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