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No other aluminum company supplied more of its metal for the occasion. The share of hydro-aluminum in the enormous quantities of food packaging for millions of guests and thousands of athletes at Olympia has long been recycled and reused, but the material of the Hydro remains an eye-catcher on the roofs of two extraordinary buildings and is also on the front of numerous public rail trains installed that moved the Olympic community a year ago and today the Londoners.

The world-famous architect Zaha Hadid designed the building that most became the icon of the Olympic sports venues: the London swimming stadium. During the games, two side wings had to be glued to this architectural work of art to make room for 17,500 guests - to the annoyance of many aesthetes. Now 2,500 guest seats are sufficient, so the controversial wings were removed, and the streamlined profile of the original architect's plan comes into its own. The enclosed space spanned, almost floating on only three concrete supports, a roof like a free-flowing wave. After this renovation, the bathroom underneath will be open to swimmers and swimmers again in April 2014.

The visible aluminum roof elements of the “Aquatics Center” are up to 160 meters long. They were formed directly on site from rolls of tape supplied by the hydro-rolling mill in Holmestrand, Norway, for a total of 40 tons. The final roof, visible as a large aluminum shaft, looks so light despite a total weight of 3,200 tons and is one of the most popular new photo opportunities for tourists in London. "Our aluminum remains prominently visible," said Dave Goddard, sales manager for Hydro's rolled products in the UK. The roof construction company Lakesmere and its subcontractors used even more material from Hydro in the substructure of the swimming stadium roof: 70 tons of aluminum in a 3005 alloy from the Karmøy rolling mill in Norway.

Sustainable “potato chip”

Hydro aluminum is also visible on the Olympic cycling stadium. It is considered one of the most sustainable in London's Olympic Park, thanks in part to its lightweight roof that weighs only about half as much as any other covered velodrome. The architect's office Hopkins had modeled its double curved roof structure on a cycle track.

To many, the roof seems more like a gigantic potato chip, which is why it was nicknamed "Olympic Pringle". The roofing company Prater used solutions that used 39 tons of aluminum strip from the Hydro plant in Holmestrand, Norway.

Light train trains

Additional railroad trains were built to strengthen local public transport at the 2012 Olympic Games. For this purpose, Bombardier produced 48 VLU-class trains and used 3 millimeter thick aluminum sheets made of a highly formable 5083 alloy from the Hydro rolling mill in Hamburg. Bombardier built around 200 units of the SSL class for the underground network; Hydro supplied 4 mm thick sheet material for the front panels from the Alunorf plant in Neuss, also here in a highly formable 5083 alloy. Since 2010, these subway deliveries have been in excess of 450 tons.

The British railway companies were threatened with losing the order to manufacture all these trains domestically. "Averting this helped our new, highly formable products that hydro-metallurgists from Bonn, Grevenbroich and Hamburg had developed," says Hydro Manager Goddard. “These special materials enable ´superforming´ operations, in which our customer Superform was able to produce amazing new components for their customers Bombardier - and thanks to simpler work processes, Bombardier was able to win the construction contracts, which kept the production in Great Britain and the valuable jobs of many British Operations employees secured. "

Goddard: “In the end, all of these projects came from our reputation as a good partner, our leading technological expertise and our strength in delivering top quality on time. In this respect, this was our share of the overall Olympic performance. ”

This text is machine translated. To view the original German text, click on DE on the top right of this window

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