Development of Sustainable High Corrosion Resistant Magnesium Alloy for Drive Unit Housing Assembly in Battery Electrical Vehicles

Magnesium (Mg) alloys, due to their high specific strength and abundant presence, have been considered for applications in automobile industry for light-weighting for decades, and some successful examples have been reported. However, their wide application is still limited due to the low corrosion resistance of existing Mg alloys. Although surface coating may be one of the solutions, it complicates the process with adding cost. Recent study in literature shed some light on the possibility to significantly improve the corrosion resistance of Mg. This project will develop new Mg alloys with increased corrosion resistance for electric vehicle by leveraging the capabilities of national laboratory in integrated computational material engineering (ICME), alloy design and advanced experiments.