Mechanical Performance of ATI 425® Alloy Bonded Sandwich Panels

Honeycomb sandwich structures manufactured using foil and sheet ATI 425® alloy, a high-strength, alpha/beta Titanium alloy, were fabricated using Collins Aerospace’s proprietary titanium bonding technology. Panels were fabricated using current production processing parameters. Testing of face-sheet static tension, sandwich core flatwise tension, sandwich core flatwise compression, sandwich core shear, and sandwich facesheet sinusoidal fatigue was completed using specimens extracted from fabricated panels. Honeycomb core fabricated from ATI 425® alloy provided superior performance compared with a Ti-3Al-2.5V (Grade 9 Ti) equivalent in sandwich core shear testing. Properties of the post-bond ATI 425® alloy facesheet were also evaluated against incumbent data. The testing validated ATI 425® as an alloy capable of creating structures using Collins Aerospace’s proprietary titanium bonding technology. This work was performed under the Metals Affordability Initiative project BA-18 under contract # FA8650-06-2-5211.