Design, Qualification and Deployment of Computationally Designed Ferrium Alloys

QuesTek Innovations LLC (Evanston, IL, USA) has applied Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME)-based technologies and its Materials by Design® methodology to successfully develop four new ultra high performance gear and structural steels (Ferrium® S53®, Ferrium® M54®, Ferrium® C61™, and Ferrium® C64®) that are commercially available from Carpenter Technology. All four Ferrium alloys have been approved for use in demanding flight critical aerospace applications and have been awarded SAE AMS numbers for procurement.

These alloys offer key performance benefits (eg, greater strength, toughness, corrosion resistance, temperature resistance, Stress Corrosion Cracking-resistance, fatigue-resistance, environmental-friendliness, etc.) versus traditional steels that have been used for decades such as 4340, 300M, AISI 9310, Pyrowear 53 and others.

An overview of the alloy design approach and timeline will be given, and QuesTek will provide an update on the leading aerospace applications of its Ferrium steels including for Air Force and Navy landing gear, Boeing’s Chinook upgrade, next generation helicopter gearboxes and others.

QuesTek will also briefly cover several other new high performance alloys relevant to the aerospace community based on titanium, molybdenum, aluminum, copper, cobalt and niobium, and alloys being designed specifically for additive manufacturing processes.