Posted on 09/04/2024 3:38:26 AM PDT by Jonty30
Researchers at MIT have developed a new approach for creating titanium alloys that surpass traditional trade-offs between strength and ductility.
By adjusting chemical composition, lattice structure, and processing techniques, they’ve created materials with enhanced mechanical properties. This innovation could be used to produce metals with exceptional combinations of strength and ductility, for aerospace and other applications.
Titanium alloys are essential structural materials for a wide variety of applications, from aerospace and energy infrastructure to biomedical equipment. But like most metals, optimizing their properties tends to involve a tradeoff between two key characteristics: strength and ductility. Stronger materials tend to be less deformable, and deformable materials tend to be mechanically weak.
Breakthrough in Titanium Alloy Research at MIT Now, researchers at MIT, collaborating with researchers at ATI Specialty Materials, have discovered an approach for creating new titanium alloys that can exceed this historical tradeoff, leading to new alloys with exceptional combinations of strength and ductility, which might lead to new applications.
The findings are described in the journal Advanced Materials, in a paper by Shaolou Wei ScD ’22, Professor C. Cem Tasan, postdoc Kyung-Shik Kim, and John Foltz from ATI Inc. The improvements, the team says, arise from tailoring the chemical composition and the lattice structure of the alloy, while also adjusting the processing techniques used to produce the material at an industrial scale.
(Excerpt) Read more at scitechdaily.com ...
Why all the non- Caucasian names?
Only somewhat related, just machined a stainless steel fire grate. Pain in the rear.
I lost a pecan tree and did not really appreciate how hot it burns. Melting a store bought cast iron grate. Stainless alloy works great so far.
Apparently, pecan is the hottest burning wood.
Live and learn.
Probably because they’re Asian.
If you want to “fix” that, go become a scientist.
It’s Rearden Metal, nothing new, Ayn Rand invented it many decades ago.
Nice to see MIT finally catching up
😁
Asian Tiger moms. If a child has an Asian mother, guaranteed that 5 hours after school involves sitting at a desk and doing homework.
Thirty years ago, I bought a large and heavy stainless-steel grate. I thought it expensive ($60) at the time. Later, I had occasion to attempt simply drilling stainless steel.
Presently being under-used as an outdoors floormat.
Why can’t Ukraine repay us with their ample Titanium resource?
Buying a stainless grate now is $1000 and up (for a heavy duty high temp one). Some $3-4k for a 3.5 foot one.
Hence why I made it.
Titanium is very abundant but hard to process and alloy. The article doesn’t provide much information about what the advance really is. The big step was done several years ago with the invention of making titanium without needing to use the Kroll process by using another method to produce titanium powder, opening the door to “meltless titanium” in a powder form that could enable various powders to create new alloys using powder metallurgy. Been a long time since working with folks developing this area, but the potential for producing titanium more efficiently and creating new alloys has been studied for decades now, would be nice if the article provided more than the advantages available, which has been known for a long time.
I used to machine a lot of commercially-pure Ti hot extrusion billets. The only good thing about it was that the chips were comparatively light when shoveling out the old Warner & Swasey lathe and moving the 55-gal chip barrels.
Had to grind away extra length when sharpening my 1-9/16” diameter HSS drills because their margins would wear into a reverse taper, causing excessive heat and torque.
I bought some welding spools of SS wire years ago from Pratt and Whitneys cash and carry store they had in East Hartford [they sold equipment,tools,machining and all kinds of neat stuff like metrological balloons, medical supplies etc. never knew what you would find there]. So I bought twelve rolls of Stainless welding wire all different but high grade stuff [Aircraft grade] including two rolls of Hastoloy wire each about 25 30 lbs left on the roll. All the rolls together were about 150.00. I used most of the 300 series up over the years on alot of different jobs and at retirement was down to the two rolls of Hastoloy. I took all the alloy to the scrap yard and was amazed at what they paid for the wire, over 800.00 for about 50 lbs of something I bought for $20 twenty years ago.
Maybe they should use it on 777 thrust links.
Sounded like something that would lift and separate with ease.
You can 3-d print it. They're 3-d printing bicycle frames now. Previously Ti bike frames were made from little more than simple tubes cut to length and welded together. 3-d printing gives them unprecedented levels of design creativity and complexity.
As for pure toughness, they're also 3-d printing Inconel, which I'm given to believe is harder to machine than Ti. Thermal Defense Solutions makes a suppressor made entirely from 3-d printed Inconel. Before, owing to the difficulty fabricating the stuff, the blast baffle was the only part of the suppressor that would be Inconel. An entirely Inconel suppressor should be immortal. Harder than steel and as light as Titanium.
Inconel 718 is a little harder to machine than Ti, at least the extrusion dies I worked on which were 45 HRC hardness. It work-hardens ahead of the cutting tool, so you need to keep up a steady feed rate to avoid sudden tool breakage.
Inconel alloys are heat resistant and retain a decent percentage of strength at high temperatures. It’s used a lot for heat-treating fixtures that will see temps up to about 2000°F.
Has MIT figured out transparent aluminum yet?
Yes they have.
Its formula is Al2O27N5.
Well hotdamn, I had no idea.
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