It is for safety reasons that aviation and aerospace engineering are associated with extremely
stringent requirements regarding the corrosion protection of light-weight materials that are
usually targeted for highly specialized purposes. This is contrast to the steel materials that
are commonly used for automotive construction and in mechanical engineering. In this highly
specialized field, too, aluminium plating turns out to have bright future prospects regarding
the use of new composite material combinations.
Galvano-aluminum layers, due to their excellent anticorrosive properties, offer an environmentally
compatible alternative to cadmium layers; in this context they are used on joining elements and
components made of high-tensile steel, stainless steel, and titanium. Owing to their high density
as well as their fine-crystalline and nonporous structure, they present another favorable alternative
for vapor-deposited aluminum layers.
High-tensile aluminum alloys, too, are successfully electroplated with galvano-aluminum. There is no
risk of hydrogen cracking because the coating is deposited from a nonaqueous electrolyte.
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