Development of aviation titanium alloy

With the rapid development of aviation science and technology, facing the increasing requirements of national defense construction, the new generation of aircraft must meet the needs of ultra-high speed, high altitude, long endurance and ultra long range. In order to improve the reliability of aircraft, more and more high-performance materials such as titanium alloy are used in advanced aircraft and engines, and the structure is more complex. Therefore, aviation titanium alloy will develop towards the direction of low cost and high performance, and continue to carry out independent research and development of new brands and new processes.

1. Strengthen low-cost aviation titanium alloy.
The requirements of the aviation industry for materials pay more attention to the balance between performance and cost, and no longer blindly pursue high performance. Low cost will run through the whole life cycle of products such as material selection, structural design, manufacturing process, testing and evaluation and maintenance. Reducing the cost of titanium alloy has become an inevitable trend of the development of the industry. Replacing expensive elements such as Nb, Mo and V with ordinary Fe and vigorously developing near net forming technology will become two key directions to reduce the engineering application cost of aviation titanium alloy.

2. Strengthen high-performance aviation titanium alloy.
Although titanium alloys have good comprehensive properties, the existing aviation titanium alloys still can not fully meet the requirements of high performance in the aviation field. At present, the actual long-term use of high-temperature titanium alloy is difficult to exceed 600 ℃, and the research on aviation titanium alloy above 600 ℃ is still in the stage of test and pilot test, which is still far from large-scale development and application. In addition, the batch stability research and application of flame retardant titanium alloy, high strength, high toughness and damage tolerance titanium alloy have become the focus of many scholars. In the future, the research on high-performance aviation titanium alloys will tend to dig deeply into the existing alloys and develop new brands of alloys.

3. Strengthen additive manufacturing in aviation titanium alloy.
With the development and application of additive manufacturing technology in recent years, laser additive manufacturing titanium alloy technology overcomes the shortcomings of traditional technology, such as difficult to produce complex titanium alloy components and large cold working deformation resistance of titanium alloy. It provides a new technical way for the manufacturing of large integral structural parts, and it has the same mechanical properties as forgings, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics has successfully developed a titanium alloy reinforcing frame for an engine (a large bomber). The research and application of additive manufacturing technology of aviation titanium alloy will open up a new advanced manufacturing way for aviation titanium alloy processing and forming.