1980s aluminum beverage can design optimization using supercomputers

The papers are to be published in the MIT Series in Materials and Technology. We have a website. Sometimes the papers are really exceptional. I remember one LGO [LFM/LGO] student from 25 years ago, who was from Alcoa, decided he wanted to talk about how do you make an aluminum can. He had references because his resource was Alcoa research labs. They were all public information, but no one could have come up with all those references unless you'd worked for Alcoa. It was a great paper. I told him I thought he ought to publish it. So we are going to let you publish things. We'd like you to practice your skills in preparing a paper as if it is going to be a professional publication, and publish it in the MIT series, which is a website. Brian has picked out some from prior years, and you'll be able to access all the ones we did last year.

Tom shows an Alcoa can and a Charles River Associates report (*Will PET Do to Aluminum Cans What Aluminum Did to Steel*), using it as a setup for limiting drawing ratio and high-speed production (200 strokes/min, 14 cups/stroke, ~42 cans/sec).

I also mentioned beer cans and Coke cans, and I found this in some of my junk this morning. [Tom produces an aluminum can.] The aluminum can by Alcoa. Inside here I just happen to have Will PET Do to Aluminum Cans What Aluminum Did to Steel, presented by Ferro Catrakis [?] — Dr. Ferro Catrakis. He doesn't put it on his card, but he was Joel Clark's first doctoral student about 1976 or '77, and he works for Charles River Associates, an economics consulting firm. He's a vice president over there. Anyway this is one of Backofen's — Coors cans — actually fairly thick, it's kind of banged up over the years. Typical soda can or beer can. Anybody know how thick the wall is? It's probably around five thousandths of an inch, about one and a half human hairs. They've been using supercomputers to design these, because they have to hold a certain amount of pressure. Coke cans are a little more tricky than beer cans because the pressure in the carbonation in a soda is higher than the carbonation in beer.

Calculus-of-variations problem becomes industrially significant when volume is high and metal cost is twice steel.

Now let's talk about materials competition. The example I like to give is beverage containers. [Tom produces several cans.] We make some cans out of steel. We make some cans out of aluminum. This is an all-aluminum can. It actually has a different alloy at the top and on the sides, because you have to form this one by drawing and stretching. In this one you need some strength, and you've got to have the pull-tab that works. And of course there's plastics. There's glass — I could have brought in a piece of glass from my office. Each one has its own advantages and disadvantages.