Discontinuously reinforced aluminum MMC extrusions

What do you do when you need to design energy or weight saving part for an aerospace, marine, automotive or robotics system and the perfect material is not available? Desirable properties not normally found in an off the shelf material. Properties for example low density, high strength, high modulus and low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE). One answer is to select several materials that have the desired properties and mix them together to produce an engineered material with the combination of desired properties. This is primarily how composites are designed, including metal matrix composites (MMCs). One lightweight MMC system specifically aluminum-SiC MMCs is described in this article which combine a low density moderate strength ductile aluminum matrix with a low CTE, high strength silicon carbide reinforcement.