Powder Metal Forming Technology for High Temperature Light Weight Aluminum-titanium Alloys

Description

In automotive manufacturing, mass reduction is one of the means to increase fuel efficiency of the vehicle. Plastics, aluminum and magnesium are some of the lightweight materials being used to replace steel and cast iron to reduce vehicular weight. Due to the lower melting point of these materials, they cannot be used in high temperature application such as exhaust manifolds, exhaust pipes and caste-in place piston liners. Recently, new low cost manufacturing processes have been developed to produce titanium powders and sponges at a price eight to ten times lower than traditional methods. This development opens a new opportunity to use aluminum-titanium alloys for high temperature application in automotive structures. The aluminum-titanium alloys at 1-20% Ti content have a very stiff phase transition curve that makes it difficult to cast using traditional casting methods. Powder metal forming technology may offer the mean to produce forms and shapes from these alloys. The goal of this project is to explore potential of powder metal sintering technology to form high temperature lightweight structure from the aluminum-titanium alloy powders for automotive applications.