Hiduminium

The alloys were in limited use for aircraft by 1929, being used in the Rolls-Royce R engine that was successful in the Schneider Trophy seaplane races.

[2] Armstrong Siddeley already having had experience with the alloy, and financial investment in its manufacturer, from their aero engine business.

[8] The company began from the ruins of the World War I aero engine builder, Peter Hooker Limited of Walthamstow.

About that time a large order was received, of some thousands of pistons for the Armstrong Siddeley Jaguar engine.

Armstrong Siddeley had no other capable source for these pistons, so W.C. Devereux, works manager of Hooker, proposed to set up a new company to complete this order.

These materials were so crucial to aircraft production that with the outbreak of World War II a shadow factory was established in the remote area of Cumberland (now Cumbria), at Distington, near Whitehaven.

[7] As well as producing ingots of raw alloy, manufacturing included the initial forging or casting processes.

Hiduminium was so successful that during World War II it was in use by all of the major British aero engine makers.

[14] By 1943 the de Havilland Goblin, the first British production jet engine to be built in large numbers, was in development.

alloys remain soft afterwards, until deliberately heat treated again by precipitation hardening for artificial ageing.

[16] After solution treatment, the tensile strength of the alloy increases, but its Young's modulus decreases.

[18] These could be worked by casting or forging, but they were not intended for rolling as sheet or general machining from bar stock.

R.R.58, also known as Aluminium 2618, comprising 2.5 copper, 1.5 magnesium, 1.0 iron, 1.2 nickel, 0.2 silicon, 0.1 titanium and the remainder aluminium, and originally intended for jet engine compressor blades, was used as the main structural material for the Concorde airframe, supplied by High Duty Alloys, it was also known as AU2GN to the French side of the project.