Advances on manufacture methods for wide lightweight aluminium stiffened panels

Wide aluminium panels with stiffeners are extensively applied in aviation, bridge and marine structures due to their high stiffness and light-weighting. Many efforts and contributions have been made to overcome the manufacturing difficulties of wide aluminium stiffened panels over years. The aim of this study is to analyse and compare current methods for producing wide stiffened panels for different applications. The manufacturing techniques for stiffened panels such as riveting, welding, machining, additive manufacturing, extrusion, are discussed. Thereinto, extrusion is a very promising technology in the production of wide aluminium stiffened panels as it can efficiently obtain extruded products with high material utilisation, good mechanical properties and structure integrity. Therefore, the methods of widening the stiffened panels in extrusion technology such as spread extrusion and postproduction flattening after extrusion are analysed emphatically. The present study is an attempt to analyse these efforts in order to guide future work in the area of producing much wider aluminium stiffened panels.