Currently, the industry is developing rapidly and requires the use of new, promising metals with high resources and improved properties. Aluminum metal matrix composites (AMMCs) are known for their high performance and have attracted the attention of most industries due to their challenging properties such as low density, high hardness, higher strength-to-weight ratio, good wear resistance, and decent resistance to corrosion. These inviting properties make them attractive for a wide variety of applications.

For this purpose, many AMMCs have been developed using various reinforcements, such as ceramic, amorphous, and nano-sized particles that have shown distinctive contributions in enhancing the structural, damping, thermal, mechanical, and corrosion properties of AMMCs. Improved properties of aluminum composites have opened new challenges for researchers and existing manufacturing sectors to produce ultra-lightweight composites.

In light of these challenges, this Special Issue targets the research of Al-based composite materials that are environmentally friendly, energy-saving, lightweight, and inexpensive. In this Special Issue, we will cover the subjects of aluminum composite design, material processing, microstructural characterization, and engineering properties of metastable aluminum composite materials. We welcome both original research and review articles.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Design and develop advanced aluminum-metal matrix composites that can provide superior mechanical properties when compared to the existing commercial aluminum composites, for diverse engineering/industrial applications
• Synthesis (powder metallurgy, additive manufacturing, conventional casting, spark plasma sintering, etc)
• Secondary processing (such as rolling or extrusion to reduce porosity, refine the microstructure, and to uniform distribution of the reinforcement, all of which tend to improve the properties of composite materials)
• Engineering properties including thermo-mechanical, tribological, and functional properties
• Microstructure and its property correlation (in order to understand mechanical properties and performance)
• Theoretical studies (including modeling and numerical simulation)
• Applications in the industry (specifically in aviation, the automobile industry, architecture, marine vehicles, and daily life, as their utilization leads to the reduction of vehicle weight and fuel savings)