Development and Application of New High-Strength, High-Ductility, Castable Titanium Alloys

QuesTek Innovations has applied its Materials by Design® approach to design and develop three new castable titanium alloys with strength and ductility characteristics similar to wrought titanium (e.g., wrought Ti-6Al-4V).  The development of these alloys has been sponsored by a U.S. Army-funded Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program administered through Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey. 

The design of these advanced Ti-alloys was based on Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) methodologies, which utilize QuesTek’s proprietary thermodynamic and kinetics databases. QuesTek applied the Materials by Design stage-gate approach to set performance goals (e.g., cast product that performs similar to a wrought product), target related properties (e.g., strength, ductility, etc.), and establish key processing parameters (e.g., alpha/beta transformation kinetics, castability, solidification behavior, etc.).

The new alloys have been designed to be cost competitive in terms of: 1) Near-net-shape formability (castability); 2) Raw materials (alloying additions); 3) Tolerance to impurities (e.g., oxygen and/or iron); and 4) Overall ease of processing (e.g., response to hot isostatic pressing, and overall microstructural and mechanical property robustness with respect to cooling rate after heat treatment).  Results will be presented from initial prototype wedge castings, further commercial-scale ingot production, ongoing alloy specification development activities (ASTM and AMS), first-round Army component production and testing, as well as recent alloy characterization data generated from industrial partnerships over the past year (e.g., fatigue data).  Commercialization efforts are ongoing, focused on completing successful prototype testing and evaluation in several applications.