Aircraft-grade titanium-aluminum alloy cuts aircraft weight by 45%

[caption id="attachment_44453" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Creative Commons–A. Rueda[/caption]

Materials engineers working with the European Space Agency (ESA) have developed a new aircraft grade titanium-aluminum alloy that promises to cut the overall weight of the aircrafts by about 45%. The project is a brainchild of IMPRESS aka Intermetallic Materials Processing in Relation to Earth and Space Solidification which is managed by the ESA. The alloys made of titanium and titanium-aluminium are light weight and have been used for several years, but casting them into the shapes of turbine blades isn't an easy process. Through their experiments, the researchers tried to melt and solidify the metals under hyper-gravity and free-fall states to study the effect of gravity on the process. Once the results were gathered, the research team tried to cast the metals at about 20 times the gravity which allowed the liquid metals to fill every part of the mould.

It's estimated that in the next few years, the industry will produce about a million of these turbine blades every year. For more coverage, check out the source link.

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