THE FUTURE OF AEROSPACE METALS

The first 100 years of powered flight gave the world spectacular innovations and capabilities, and metals played an indispensable role in making these advancements possible. In the past 20 years, many have come to consider aerospace metals as a mature technology with limited opportunities for future innovations. The US aerospace metals industries face competition from other materials and from developing competitors in the international arena. Are we done with metals? A convergence of new tools and capabilities is forming that offers new opportunities for metallic applications, including computational alloy development, the ‘digital thread’ concept, additive manufacturing, and others. New alloy development strategies are being built that take advantage of some of these new tools. In this talk, the challenges and opportunities to maintain a robust, innovative environment in aerospace metals will be discussed.