Examination of superplastic forming combined with diffusion bonding for titanium: Perspective from experience

Superplastic forming (SPF) combined with diffusion bonding (DB) has been used successfully for the fabrication of titanium aerospace hardware. Many of these applications have been for military aircraft, whereby a complex built-up structure has been replaced with monolithic parts. Several methods for applying the two- and four-sheet titanium SPF/DB processes have been devised, including the welding of sheets prior to forming and the use of silk-screened stop-off (yttria) to prevent bonding where it is undesirable. Very little progress has been made in the past few years toward understanding and modeling the SPF/DB process using constitutive equations and data by laboratory testing. Concerns that engineers face in designing for fatigue life, acceptable design loads, and damage tolerance are currently being studied, but the database is very limited. This is a summary of past work found in the literature and forms the foundation for additional research. This paper was presented at the International Symposium on Superplasticity and Superplastic Forming sponsored by the Manufacturing Critical Sector at the ASM International AeroMat 2004 Conference and Exposition, June 8–9, 2004, in Seattle, WA. The symposium was organized by Daniel G. Sanders, The Boeing Company.     

The characteristics of a low-power-consumption plasma jet and ceramic coatings

The effects of the composition of plasma gases (Ar-N₂, Ar-H₂), arc current, and voltage on the temperature and velocity of a low-power (5 kW) plasma torch in the arc field free region has been investigated using an enthalpy probe. Coatings of Al₂O₃-13TiO₂ were deposited under different conditions. The results show that in the Ar-N₂ plasma, the enthalpy, temperature, and velocity change little with arc current and voltage when regulating the nitrogen proportion in the plasma gas. The hardness of the resulting coatings is 800 to 900 kg/mm² HV.300. For Ar-H₂ plasma, however, increases in the H₂ content in the mixture of the gases remarkably enhanced the velocity and heat transfer ability of the plasma jet, with the result that the coatings showed high hardness up to 1200 HV.     

Effect of austenitization on austempering of copper alloyed ductile iron

A ductile iron containing 0.6% copper as the main alloying element was austempered at a fixed austempering temperature of 330 °C for a fixed austempering time of 60 min after austenitization at 850 °C for different austenitization periods of 60, 90, and 120 min. The austempering process was repeated after changing austenitization temperature to 900 °C. The effect of austenitization temperature and time was studied on the carbon content and its distribution in the austenite after austenitization. The effect of austenitization parameters was also studied on austempered microstructure, structural parameters like volume fraction of austenite, X _γ , carbon content C _γ , and X _γ C _γ , and bainitic ferrite needle size, d _α after austempering. The average carbon content of austenite increases linearly with austenitization time and reaches a saturation level. Higher austenitization temperature results in higher carbon content of austenite. As regards the austempered structure, the lowering austenitization temperature causes significant refinement and more uniform distribution of austempered structure, and a decrease in the volume fraction of retained austenite.     

Influence of the Workpiece Stiffness on the Electromagnetic Sheet Metal Forming Process into Dies

Electromagnetic sheet metal forming is a high speed forming process using pulsed magnetic fields to form metals with high electrical conductivity such as aluminum. Thereby, workpiece velocities of more than 300 m/s are achievable, which can cause difficulties when forming into a die. The kinetic energy, which is related to the workpiece velocity, must be dissipated in a short time slot when the workpiece hits the die; otherwise undesired effects, for example rebound can occur. One possibility to handle this shortcoming is to locally increase the stiffness of the workpiece. A modal analysis is carried out in order to determine the stiffness of specific regions of the workpiece so that an estimation concerning the feasibility of the desired geometry is possible in advance without doing cost and time consuming experiments. Thereby, the desired geometry of the workpiece will be fractionized in significant sectors. This approach has to define the internal force variables acting on the cutting edge, which are required to constrain the numerical model. Finally, a method will be developed with the objective of calculating the stiffness of each sector. The numerical results will be verified by experiments. This article was presented at Materials Science & Technology 2006, Innovations in Metal Forming symposium held in Cincinnati, OH, October 15-19, 2006.     

Copper-nickel superalloys as inert alloy anodes for aluminum electrolysis

The superalloys Cu-Ni-Al, Cu-Ni-Fe, and Cu-Ni-Cr were studied as anodes for aluminum electrolysis. The alloys were tested for corrosion in acidic electrolyte molten salt and for oxidation in both air and oxygen. The results showed that the Cu-Ni-Al anodes possess excellent resistance to oxidation and corrosion, and the oxidation rates of Cu-Ni-Fe and Cu-Ni-Al anodes were slower than those of pure copper or nickel. During electrolysis, the cell voltage of the Cu-Ni-Al anode was affected most by the concentration of alumina in cryolite molten salt. The Cu-Ni-Fe anode exhibited corrosion resistance in electrolyte molten salt. Comparatively, the Cu-Ni-Cr anode showed poor resistance to oxidation and corrosion. The testing found that further study is warranted on the use of Cu-Ni-Al and Cu-Ni-Fe as inert alloy anodes. For more information, contact Zhongning Shi, Northeastern University, School of Materials and Metallurgy, WenhuiRoad No. 3, Shenynag, Liaoning 110004 China; e-mail znshi@163.com     

Properties of Induction Plasma Sprayed Iron Based Nanostructured Alloy Coatings for Metal Based Thermal Barrier Coatings

Metal-based thermal barrier coatings (MBTBCs) have been produced using high frequency induction plasma spraying (IPS) of iron-based nanostructured alloy powders. The study of MBTBCs has been initiated to challenge issues associated with current TBC materials such as difficult prediction of their “in-service” lifetime. Reliability of TBCs is an important aspect besides the economical consideration. Therefore, the study of MBTBCs, which should posses higher toughness than the current TBC materials, has been initiated to challenge the mechanical problems of ceramic-based TBCs (CBTBCs) to create a new generation of TBCs. The thermal diffusivity (TD) (α) properties of the MBTBCs were measured using a laser flash method, and density (ρ) and specific heat (C _p) of the MBTBCs were also measured for their thermal conductivity (k) calculation (k = αρ C _p).     

Advances in fabricating superplastically formed and diffusion bonded components for aerospace structures

Superplastic forming and diffusion bonding (SPF/DB) production hardware is being fabricated today for aerospace applications. Metal tooling is being used to bring the titanium sheets into contact so diffusion bonding can occur. However, due to material sheet and tooling tolerances, good bond quality is difficult to achieve over large areas. A better method for achieving DB is to use “stop-off” inside sealed sheets of titanium, which constitutes a pack, and then the pack is bonded using external gas pressure. A good method for heating the pack for this process is to use induction heating. Components using “stop-off” that were diffusion bonded first and then superplastically formed have shown much better bond quality than components that were produced using matched metal tooling. This type of tooling has been successful at bonding small areas as long as the exerted pressure is concentrated on the area where bonding is required. Finite element modeling is providing weight effect solutions for titanium SPF/DB aerospace structures. This paper was presented at the International Symposium on Superplasticity and Superplastic Forming, sponsored by the Manufacturing Critical Sector at the ASM International AeroMat 2004 Conference and Exposition, June 8–9, 2004, in Seattle, WA. The symposium was organized by Daniel G. Sanders, The Boeing Company.     

Improvement of wear resistance of plasma-sprayed molybdenum blend coatings

The wear resistance of plasma sprayed molybdenum blend coatings applicable to synchronizer rings or piston rings was investigated in this study. Four spray powders, one of which was pure molybdenum and the others blended powders of bronze and aluminum-silicon alloy powders mixed with molybdenum powders, were sprayed on a low-carbon steel substrate by atmospheric plasma spraying. Microstructural analysis of the coatings showed that the phases formed during spraying were relatively homogeneously distributed in the molybdenum matrix. The wear test results revealed that the wear rate of all the coatings increased with increasing wear load and that the blended coatings exhibited better wear resistance than the pure molybdenum coating, although the hardness was lower. In the pure molybdenum coatings, splats were readily fractured, or cracks were initiated between splats under high wear loads, thereby leading to the decrease in wear resistance. On the other hand, the molybdenum coating blended with bronze and aluminum-silicon alloy powders exhibited excellent wear resistance because hard phases such as CuAl₂ and Cu₉Al₄ formed inside the coating.     

A computational fluid dynamic analysis of gas and particle flow in flame spraying

The flame spraying process, which is a common industrial thermal spraying application, has been analyzed by means of three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The process used at the Volvo Aero Corporation for the coating of fan and compressor housings has been modeled. The process uses the Metco 6P torch (Metco, Westbury, NY), which ejects a mixture of acetylene and oxygen at high speed through a ring of 16 orifices to form the flame. A stream of argon gas flowing through an orifice in the center of the ring carries a powder of nickel-covered bentonite through the flame to the spray substrate. The torch is cooled by a flow of air through an outer ring of 9 orifices. The simulation emulated reality closely by including the individual inlets for fuel, cooling air, and injected particles. The gas combustion was simulated as a turbulent, multicomponent chemically reacting flow. The standard, two-equation k-ε turbulence model was used. The chemical reaction rates appeared as source terms in the species transport equations. They were computed from the contributions of the Arrhenius rate expressions and the Magnussen and Hjertager eddy dissipation model. The first simulations included several intermediate chemical substances whose predicted concentration agreed favorably with measurements. Later, more simplified simulations incorporated only the global chemical reaction involving the initial and the final products, with corrections to the thermal properties being made to account for the missing intermediaries. The gas velocity and temperature fields predicted by the later simulations compared satisfactorily to those predicted by the earlier, more elaborate, ones. Therefore, the final simulations, which incorporated injected particles, were conducted employing the simplified model with only the global reaction. An in-house finite difference code was developed to calculate particle properties. Allowance was made for elliptical shapes, phase changes, and internal heat transfer with regard to the composite material. The particle velocities and temperatures predicted by the final simulations compared fairly well with experimental results obtained with the optical DPV2000 system.     

Influence of the post-deformation annealing heat treatment on the low-cycle fatigue of NiTi shape memory alloys

Shape memory alloys (SMA) suffer from the same impairing mechanisms experienced during cycling loading by classic alloys. Moreover, SMA fatigue behavior is greatly influenced by thermomechanical cycling through the zone of thermoelastic phase transformation, which is the basis of shape memory and superelasticity effects. Since the fatigue resistance of any material can be improved by an appropriate thermomechanical treatment, in the present work combined differential scanning calorimetry and microhardness testing were used to determine an optimum annealing temperature for the cold-worked Ni-50.1%Ti alloy. The optimization is based on the assumption that latent heat of transformation is proportional to the mechanical work generated by SMA upon heating, while material hardness is related to the yield stress of the material. It is supposed that an optimum trade-off in these two properties guarantees the best dimensional and functional stability of SMA devices. The level and stability of the mechanical work generated by the material during low-cycle fatigue testing are considered criteria for the material performance and thus of the validity of the proposed optimization procedure.