Almazium®: a new high-performance aluminium alloy capable of repeatedly healing its own damage and defects

On September 08, 2026, Sophie De Raedemacker successfully defended his PhD, under the supervision of Professor Aude Simar.

Aluminium alloys produced by additive manufacturing (AM) are attracting increasing interest from the aerospace and automotive industries due to their excellent strength-to-weight ratio and their ability to enable the fabrication of complex, topologically optimised geometries.

Despite these advantages, the widespread adoption of AM Al alloys remains limited by the reliability and durability of the produced components.

The development of "self-healing" materials emerges as a promising pathway to extend the service life of additively manufactured components.

Her thesis investigates a new aluminium alloy used for additive manufacturing, called Almazium®, able to heal multiple times its damage and defects while presenting high mechanical performances.

These results open new pathways for the design of healable aluminium alloys and provide a foundation for developing next-generation lightweight structural materials with extended service life.

Multi-scale techniques were used to assess the healing efficiency and the mechanical properties of Almazium®.

In particular, Sophie went twice to the ESRF - The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility – ESRF to perform X-ray nano-holotomography allowing the tracking of the evolution of each defect before and after a healing heat treatment at nano and micro-scales.

Access to ESRF also made it possible to perform the first systematic investigation of multiple cycles of damage and healing in metals, where tensile deformation is applied between each healing step to test whether previously healed voids reopen or remain closed.

It also gave the opportunity to study the damage mechanisms of this new alloy.

Overall, this work establishes a comprehensive framework linking processing, microstructure, damage evolution, and healing in Al-Mg-Zr alloys.
It demonstrates that healing functionality can be effectively integrated into additively manufactured Al systems, but that its full exploitation requires careful optimisation of:
• powder quality
• processing parameters to minimize critical defects
• Mg content
 

These findings open a pathway toward the design of damage-tolerant lightweight structural materials with extended service life in demanding applications.

Funded by FNRS, this research was conducted under the supervision of Prof. Aude Simar, with international collaborations including École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL, ESRF - The European Synchrotron, Aix-Marseille Université, Sorbonne Université Paris Nord, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Department of Materials of Loughborough University and Université Grenoble Alpes -CNRS.
This work was also made possible thanks to the project HAMAAC (M-ERA.NET 3, Horizon 2020).

Congratulations, Sophie !