Potential for Advanced Magnesium Alloy Powders in Aerospace Applications

Emergent efforts towards reducing fuel consumption have led to renewed interests in the use of magnesium alloys as materials of choice for lightweighting of transportation structures. In addition to conventional cast and wrought metallurgy, the use of powder metallurgy offers a potential processing route to target unique compositions, unique microstructures and high performance in magnesium alloys. This study highlights the potential of using magnesium alloys powders for aerospace applications using cold spray and laser assisted deposition processes for component repair and fabrication of near-net-shape parts that currently or in the future may use magnesium. High quality gas atomized powders of ElektronWE43B (-325 mesh) were used for cold spray studies with the ultimate objective of optimizing process parameters that could be used to fabricate/repair part with properties matching or exceeding those of the base alloy. Several process parameters including spray temperature, spray pressure, particle velocity, and particle size were studied and the resulting deposition density exceeded 99.5%, allowing for WE43 to be sprayed and tested as monolithic blocks to determine bulk sprayed properties. For laser deposition studies, gas atomized ElektronWE43B powder (with a mean particle size of 80?m) was deposited on WE43-T5 wrought substrates under varying conditions of laser power, travel speed and powder bed height. The resulting microstructure was evaluated in terms of penetration depth, solute segregation and hardness profile across the interface leading to feasibility determination for the use for magnesium alloy powder via laser assisted deposition. The results of these studies show that magnesium alloy powders can be potentially used to manufacture and repair lightweight components for aerospace applications.