The Aluminum Beverage Can

Produced by the hundreds of millions every day, the modern

can robust enough to support the weight of an average adult
is a tribute to precision design and engineering
Makers of beer and soft-drink containers in the U.S. produce 300 million
aluminum beverage cans a day, 100 billion of them every year. The industry
is output, the equivalent of one can per American per day, outstrips even
the production of nails and paper clips. If asked whether the beverage can
requires any more special care in its manufacture than do those other
homey objects, most of us would probably answer negatively. In fact,
manufacturers of aluminum cans
exercise the same attention and precisin as do makers of the metal in an
aircraft wing. The engineers who press the design of cans toward perfection
apply the same analytical methods used for space vehicles. As a result of
these efforts, today is can weighs about 0.48 ounce, down
from about 0.66 ounce in the 1960s, when such containers were first
constructed. The standard American aluminum can, which holds 12 ounces
of liquid, is not only light in weight and rugged but is also about the same
height and diameter as the traditional drinking tumbler. Such a can, whose
wall surfaces are thinner than two pages from this magazine, withstands
more than 90 pounds of pressure per square.
WILLIAM F. HOSFORD and JOHN L. DUNCAN have been active in research on
sheet-metal forming for more than 30 years and act as consultants to
aluminum producers. Hosford is professor of materials science and
engineering at the University of Michigan. He received his doctorate in
metallurgical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and has written books on metal forming and the plasticity of materials.
Duncan, who received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the
University of Manchester in England, is professor of mechanical engineering
at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Like Hosford, Duncan has
written a textbook on the forming of sheet metal.
inch three times the pressure in an automobile tire. Yet the can industry is
not standing pat on its achievement. Strong economic incentives motivate it
toward further improvements. Engineers are seeking ways to maintain the
can is performance while continuing to trim the amount of material needed.
Reducing the can is mass by 1 percent will save approximately $20 million a
year in aluminum (and make still easier and even less meaningful the
macho gesture of crushing an empty can with a bare hand). Aside from the
savings it yields, the modern manufacturing process imparts a highly
reflective surface to the can is exterior, which acts as a superb base for
decorative printing. This attribute adds to the enthusiasm for the aluminum
can among those who market beverages. Indeed, that industry consumes
about a fifth of all aluminum used in the U.S. Consequently, beverage cans
have emerged as the single most important market for aluminum. Until
1985, most cans held beer, but now two thirds of them store nonalcoholic
drinks.

The aluminum beverage can is a direct descendant of the steel can. The first
of these vessels appeared in 1935, marketed by Kreuger Brewing Company,
then in Richmond, Va. Similar to food cans, this early beverage container
comprised three pieces of steel: a rolled and seamed cylinder and two end
pieces. Some steel cans even had conical tops that were sealed by bottle
caps. During World War II, the government shipped great quantities of beer
in steel cans to servicemen overseas. After the war, much of the production
reverted to bottles. But veterans retained a fondness for canned beer, so
manufacturers did not completely abandon the technology even though the
three-piece cans were more expensive to produce than the bottles.
The first aluminum beverage can went on the market in 1958. Developed by
Adolph Coors Company in Golden, Colo., and introduced to the public by the
Hawaiian brewery Primo, it was made from two pieces of aluminum. To
produce such cans, Coors employed a so-called impact-extrusion process.
The method begins with a circular slug that has a diameter equal to that of
the can. A punch driven into the slug forces material to flow backward
around it, forming the can. The process thus made the side walls and the
bottom from one piece. The top was added after lling.
This early technique proved inadequate for mass manufacturing. Production
was slow, and tooling problems plagued the process. Moreover, the resulting
product could hold only seven ounces and was not efficient structurally: the
base could not be made thinner than 0.03 inch, which was much thicker
than it needed to be to withstand the internal forces.
Nevertheless, the popularity of the product encouraged Coors and other
companies to look for a better way to make the cans. A few years later
Reynolds Metals pioneered the contemporary method of production,
fabricating the first commercial 12-ounce aluminum can in 1963. Coors, in
conjunction with Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corporation, soon followed.
But pressure from large can companies, which also purchased steel from
Kaiser for threepiece cans, is said to have obliged Kaiser to withdraw
temporarily from aluminum-can development. Apparently, these steel-can
makers feared the competition of a new breed of container. Hamms Brewery
in St. Paul, Minn., began to sell beer in 12-ounce aluminum cans in 1964. By
1967 Coca-Cola and PepsiCo were using these cans.
Today aluminum has virtually displaced steel in all beverage containers. The
production of steel three-piece cans, which are now rarely made, reached its
peak of 30 billion cans in 1973. The number of two-piece steel cans topped
out at 10 billion in the late 1970s. This design now accounts for less than 1
percent of the cans in the U.S. market (they are, however, more popular in
Europe). The process that Reynolds initiated is known as two-piece drawing
and wall ironing. Aluminum producers begin with a molten alloy, composed
mostly of aluminum but also containing small amounts of magnesium,
manganese, iron, silicon and copper. The alloy is cast into ingots. Rolling
mills then flatten the alloy into sheets.
The first step in can making is cutting circular blanks, 5.5 inches in diameter.
Obviously, cutting circles from a sheet produces scrap. The theoretical loss
for close-packed circles is 9 percent; in practice, the loss amounts to 12 to
14 percent. To reduce this waste, sheets are made wide enough to

incorporate 14 cups laid out in two staggered rows. Each blank is drawn into
a 3.5-inch-diameter cup.
The next three forming operations for the can body are done in one
continuous punch stroke by a second machine in about one fifth of a second.
First, the cup is redrawn to a final inside diameter of about 2.6 inches, which
increases the height from 1.3 to 2.25 inches. Then, a sequence of three
ironing operations thins and stretches the walls, so that the body reaches a
height of about five inches. In the last step, the punch presses the base of
the can body against a metal dome, giving the bottom of the can its inward
bulge. This curve behaves like the arch of a bridge in that it helps to prevent
the bottom from bulging out under pressure. For added integrity, the base of
the can and the bottom of the side walls are made thicker than any other
part of the can body. Because the alloy does not have the same properties
in all directions, the can body emerges from the forming operations with
walls whose top edges are wavy, or "eared". To ensure a flat top, machinery
must trim about a quarter inch from the top. After trimming, the cup goes
through a number of highspeed operations, including washing, printing and
lacquering. Finally, the can is automatically checked for cracks and pinholes.
Typically, about one can in 50,000 is defective.
Ironing is perhaps the most critical operation in making the body of the can.
The precisely dimensioned punch holds and pushes the cup through two or
three carbide ironing rings. To thin and elongate the can, the punch must
move faster than the metal does in the ironing zone. The clearance between
the punch and each ring is less than the thickness of the metal. The friction
generated at the punch surface assists in pushing the metal through the
ironing rings. To increase this friction, the punch may be slightly roughened
with a criss-cross scratch pattern (which can be seen, impressed on the
inside of a can). On the exterior of the can the shearing of the surface
against the ironing rings yields the desired mirror finish.
The side walls can be thinned without loss of integrity because, structurally,
the can is a "pressure vessel." That is, it relies for part of its strength on the
internal force exerted by carbon dioxide in beer and soft drinks or by the
nitrogen that is now infused into such uncarbonated liquids as fruit juice.
Indeed, most beers are pasteurized in the can, a process that exerts nearly
90 pounds per square inch on the material. Carbonated beverages in hot
weather may also build up a similar pressure.
Filling introduces a different kind of stress on the can. During this stage, the
can (without its lid) is pressed tightly against a seat in a filling machine. It
must not buckle, either during filling and sealing or when filled cans are
stacked one on another. Hence, can makers specify a minimum "column
strength" of about 250 pounds for an empty can body. Thin-walled
structures do not easily meet such a requirement. The slightest eccentricity
of the load even a dent in the can wall causes a catastrophic collapse. This
crushing can be demonstrated by standing (carefully) on an upright, empty
can. Manufacturers avoid failures by using machines that hold the cans
precisely.
The second piece of the can, the lid, must be stiffer than the body. That is
because its flat geometry is inherently less robust than a curved shape
(dams, for instance, bow inward, presenting a convex surface to the waters

they restrain). Can makers strengthen the lid by constructing it from an alloy
that has less manganese and more magnesium than that of the body. They
also make the lid thicker than the walls. Indeed, the lid constitutes about
one fourth the total weight of the can. To save on the mass, can makers
decrease the diameter of the lid so that it is smaller than the diameter of
the cylinder. Then they "neck down" the top part of the cylindrical wall, from
2.6 to 2.1 inches, to accommodate the lid. An ingenious integral rivet
connects the tab to the lid. The lid is scored so that the can opens easily,
but the piece of metal that is pushed in remains connected.
In addition to clever design, making billions of cans a year demands reliable
production machinery. It has been said that in order to prove himself, an
apprentice Swiss watchmaker was not required to make a watch but rather
to make the tools to do so. That sentiment applies to can manufacturing. As
one production manager remarked, "If at the end of a bad day, you are a
half million cans short, someone is sure to notice." A contemporary set of
ironing dies can produce 250,000 cans before they require regrinding. That
quantity is equivalent to more than 20 miles of aluminum stretched to
tolerances of 0.0001 inch. Die rings are replaced as soon as their
dimensions fall out of specification, which occurs sometimes more than once
a day.
Much of the success behind the consistent and precise production lies in the
strong yet formable alloy sheet. The metallurgical properties responsible for
the performance of modern can sheet have been proprietary and therefore
not well known. Only within the past decade has that situation changed.
Through the efforts of Harish D. Merchant of Gould Electronics in Eastlake,
Ohio, James G. Morris of the University of Kentucky and others, scientific
papers on the metallurgy of can sheet have become more widely published.
We now know that three basic factors increase the strength of aluminum.
We have already mentioned one of them: manganese and magnesium
dissolved into the material. These atoms displace some of the aluminum
ones in the substance. Because they are slightly different in size, the
manganese and magnesium atoms distort the crystal lattice. The distortions
resist deformation, thus adding strength to the sheet.
The second contribution comes from the presence of so-called intermetallic
particles. Such particles, which form during the processing of the sheet,
consist of a combination of different metals in the alloy (mostly iron and
manganese). They tend to be harder than the alloy itself, thus supplying
strength.
Perhaps the most important contribution to sheet strength, however, is the
work hardening that occurs when the sheets are cold-rolled (flattened at
room temperature). During this shaping, dislocations, or imperfections, in
the lattice materialize. As the metal deforms, the dislocations move about
and increase in number. Eventually they become entangled with one
another, making further deformation more difficult.
Unfortunately, this work hardening dramatically reduces the ability of the
material to stretch. Tensile tests indicate that the elongation capacity drops
from 30 percent to about 2 or 3 percent. Conventional wisdom had it that
sheets can be formed only if the material has a high tensile elongation.

Certainly in the automotive industry, body parts are formed from fully
annealed sheets that can elongate more than 40 percent. This philosophy
guided the early attempts to make two-piece aluminum cans. Researchers
concentrated on annealed or partially work-hardened sheets, which
sacrificed strength for ductility.
The understanding of formability received a major boost from studies in the
1960s by Stuart P. Keeler and Walter A. Backofen of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and Zdzislaw Marciniak of the Technical University in
Warsaw, among others. Looking at the behavior of various sheet metals,
they considered more than just the behavior under tension applied in one
direction(as is done in the tension test). They also looked at what happens
when tension is applied simultaneously in two directions. They showed that
a small window of strains exists that permits forming without structural
failure. Although work hardening greatly reduces the size of this window, a
small slit nonetheless remains open enough to permit the doming of the
base and drawing and redrawing of the side walls.
The crucial advance that made the aluminum can economical, however,
came from Linton D. Bylund of Reynolds.He realized that cans could be
made from a fully work-hardened sheet using a carefully designed process
that specified the placement of the ironing rings, the shape of the punch
and dies, and many other parameters. The strong, fully work-hardened
sheet made it possible to use sheet that was thinner, saving enough weight
to make the cans economically competitive.
Nowhere is the technique of forming work-hardened sheet more apparent
than it is in the cleverly designed rivet that holds the tab on the can lid. The
rivet is an integral piece of the lid. To make it, the center of the lid must be
stretched by bulging it upward a bit. This "extra" material is drawn to form a
rivet and then fattened to secure the tab (which is a separate piece of
metal).
Besides making the can sheet stronger, manufacturers also sought to
reduce the amount of aluminum needed by controlling the waviness, or
earing, which as we have seen takes place at the top of the can after
ironing. The effect derives from the crystallographic texture of the aluminum
sheet, that is, the orientation of its crystal structure. Hence, earing is
inevitable to some extent. Hans-Joachim Bunge of the Technical University in
Clausthal, Germany, and Ryong-Joon Roe of Du Pont and others have
developed x ray difraction techniques to describe qualitatively the textures
that cause earing. Laboratory technicians prepare specimens by grinding
away layers of the sheet to expose material at different depths. X-ray
difraction coupled with elegant analytical techniques automatically produces
threedimensional diagrams that reveal the preferred orientation of crystals
as a function of depth in the sheet.
Such diagnostic approaches have enabled aluminum companies to produce
sheet that yields much smaller ears. Metallurgists balance the two
predominant crystallographic textures that exist in the aluminum. One kind
of texture arises during annealing of the alloy after the alloy is hot-rolled
from ingots. It causes four ears to appear every 90 degrees (at 0, 90, 180
and 270 degrees) around the circumference of the can. The second kind of
texture results from cold-rolling the sheet, which produces an ear at 45, 135,

225 and 315 degrees. Proper control of annealing and rolling can lead to a
combination of the two textures such that ears caused by one fill the valleys
caused by the other. The result is eight very low ears. The maximum height
of an ear is often less than 1 percent of the height of the cup.
Consistent processing of metal and careful design have now made each part
of the can about as strong as any other. It is not unusual to find cans in
which the opening on the lid fractures, and the bottom dome and lid bulge
at nearly the same pressure, within the range of 100 to 115 pounds per
square inch.
Despite the success of current design and manufacture, can makers are still
searching for refinements. Much of the investigation focuses on ways to use
aluminum more efficiently, because the metal represents half the cost of the
can. One possibility for saving would be to cast the molten alloy into thin
slabs rather than into thick ingots, as is currently done. A typical ingot may
be 30 inches thick, which is rolled down
Copyright 1994 Scientific American, Inc. by a factor of 2,500 to 0.011 or
0.012 inch. So much rolling requires expensive capital equipment furnaces
and rolling mills and consumes a lot of energy.
It is possible to cast aluminum continuously into slabs that are an inch thick
or less. These thin slabs would require much less rolling to reach the desired
final sheet thickness. Continuous casting is used for some soft aluminum
alloys for example, aluminum foil is made from material cast to a thickness
of 0.1 inch.
Unfortunately, production of satisfactory can stock from thin slabs thwarts
the metallurgists. The faster cooling and decreased rolling inherent in
continuous casting do not yield the desired metallurgical structure. Two
main problems arise. First, crystallographic texture cannot be properly
controlled to prevent large ears. Second, the faster cooling rate produces
severe difficulties in ironing the can walls.
These ironing problems develop because of the nature of the intermetallic
particles that form when the molten alloy solidifies. Intermetallic particles
that develop during solidification are much larger than those that originate
during processing (which as we have seen impart strength to the sheet).
Because of their size, they play a key role in ironing. During this procedure,
aluminum tends to adhere to the ironing rings. Ordinarily, the intermetallic
particles, which are about five microns in size, act like very fine sandpaper
and polish the ironing rings. The faster cooling rates of continuous casting,
however, produce intermetallic particles that are much smaller (about one
micron). At this size, the particles are not very effective in removing
aluminum that sticks to the ironing rings. As a result, aluminum builds up on
the rings and eventually causes unsightly scoring on the can walls. The
problem of achieving thin slabs with the desired intermetallic particles may
yet be solved, perhaps by altering the composition of the alloy or by shifting
the rate of solidification from the material is molten state.
The control of casting epitomizes a recurrent feature of the whole can story:
one behavior is carefully traded off against another, from the control of
earing and ironability to economical sheet production, from can weight to

structural integrity. Yet one cost element eludes an easy balance: the energy
needed to make cans. Most of this outlay lies in the aluminum itself. Taking
into account ineciencies in electricity distribution and smelting, industry
experts estimate that 2.3 megajoules of energy is needed to produce the
aluminum in one can. This value is equal to about the amount of energy
expended to keep a 100-watt bulb lit for six hours, or about 1.7 percent of
the energy of a gallon of gasoline. Although small, it represents the major
expenditure of a can.
One way to reduce this expense is through recycling, which can save up to
95 percent of the energy cost. Indeed, more than 63 percent of aluminum
cans are now returned for remelting. Recycling also has an important part
within the aluminum mill. For every ton of can bodies made, a ton of scrap
metal is produced. This scrap is remelted and thus injected back into the
manufacturing cycle. Developing simpler ways of producing can sheet and
finding stronger materials that can lead to lighter cans should save more
money and energy.
Meeting these goals presents a great challenge. Existing cans already use a
highly strengthened, well-controlled sheet. Their shape is finely engineered
for structural strength and minimum weight. And with little tool wear, the
production machinery in a single plant is capable of making many millions of
cans a day with few defects. The rewards of even small improvements,
however, are quite substantial. The demand for aluminum beverage cans
continues to grow everywhere in the world; their production increases by
several billion every year. The success of the can is an industrial lesson
about what can be achieved when scientic and engineering skills are
combined with human perseverance.