QuesTek Wins SBIR Phase-II Award for Titanium Alloy

0
3266

QuesTek Innovations LLC was recently awarded a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project from the U.S. Army to continue to apply its Materials by Design® technology to the design and development of a new castable titanium alloy for Army applications.

The aim of the project is to develop new castable titanium alloy compositions by exploring designs that incorporate lower cost alloying components and processing steps. Alloy design activities will include minimizing sensitivity to elevated impurity levels (e.g. oxygen and iron) encountered in non aerospace-grade stock materials. The final composition will first be produced (i.e. cast) and characterized using simplified test geometries, and then at final scale into specific Army components. The design property goals will consider cast titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V, one of the mostly widely used titanium alloys, as one baseline.

A new low-cost titanium alloy with improved castability could see widespread adoption across many Army and Department of Defense platforms, where the exceptional strength-to-weight and corrosion resistance properties of titanium can be combined with the cost savings of near-net-shape processing (i.e. casting). The new alloy has significant potential application in energy, chemical processing, marine, transportation, and other commercial and industrial sectors. Benefits of the new alloy will likely include reduced machining costs, less material waste, lower part count, faster speed to market, greater equipment durability, and lighter, more-efficient equipment.

The two-year SBIR Phase II contract is valued at up to $729,964.77, with $364,505.00 of initial funding authorized for FY2009. Earlier the Army also awarded QuesTek with a $49,998.00, four-month option as part of a preceding Phase I SBIR award.

“We appreciate this award from the Department of Defense to develop a low-cost castable titanium alloy that can directly address Army needs, and also meet broad commercial and industrial market requirements,” says Charlie Kuehmann, president and CEO. “This Phase II award builds on our past successes such as Ferrium S53®, our ultra-high-strength, corrosion-resistant steel for aircraft landing gear and other applications. Ferrium S53 was developed in part with Department of Defense funding and is now available for commercial, industrial and governmental use from multiple U.S.-based alloy producers under QuesTek’s licenses.”

QuesTek Innovations LLC is a global leader in computational materials design. For more information contact Rich Kooy at (847) 425-8213 or rkooy@questek.com. Go online to [www.questek.com].