Collaborative project aims to take air out of airplane parts—and a lot of other things
Any vehicle that flies or holds a motor stands to benefit from the second technology acceleration project announced by LIFT. With Boeing and The Ohio State University as the lead partners, the project team intends to advance technologies for die casting and heat-treating aluminum parts, primarily for aerospace, defense, and automotive applications. High speed die casting involves pushing molten metal into a mold to form parts that are common in many forms of transportation.
“If we can reduce just a few ounces of metal from automobile engine mounting cradles or the housings that hold transmissions we can deliver an impact that is multiplied by the millions,” said Larry Brown, executive director of LIFT. “In aerospace an added benefit might lower manufacturing costs as well as increase fuel savings from the lighter weight designs.”
Boeing Associate Technical Fellow Russ Cochran said, “If you can take a common part such as an access panel you see on the wing of an airplane and use high integrity die castings, it could reduce weight and manufacturing costs. We hope to demonstrate that advances in high vacuum die casting will produce parts that meet all the rigorous performance specifications we require — while realizing weight and efficiency goals.”
In current high-speed aluminum die casting, microscopic air bubbles can form inside the part as the molten metal races through the mold. Engineers allow for that by using more metal and making parts thicker to meet strength and other performance requirements.
Alan Luo, professor of materials science and engineering and integrated systems engineering at The Ohio State University said, “We know in the laboratory that if we pull all the air out of the mold just before the molten metal flows in we can eliminate the bubbles. Without bubbles we can design thinner parts that are just as strong and durable, but with less metal and lighter weight.” Luo added, “There are other benefits, as well, because the new process allows us to heat-treat parts after they are cast, which will improve their performance in service.”
An important part of the two-year project will be enhancing the ability of computer models to predict the performance of aluminum die cast parts by combining information about the microstructure of the metal with a host of design and production parameters. The process, called integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) has great potential for reducing the time it takes to design and qualify new components for vehicles.
Eaton, Alcoa, Comau, and Nemak are among the other industry partners on the project, demonstrating the broad range of possible production-volume applications for the technology. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Southwest Research Institute, the University of Michigan, and Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) will contribute to the project as research participants. American Foundry Society (AFS) and North American Die Casting Association (NADCA) will help disseminate knowledge on how to manage this new thin-wall aluminum die casting in a production environment.
“What we are doing here is bridging that gap between great research in laboratories and great manufacturing skills in private industry,” added Brown. “Once you bring these innovations into production, the results just multiply.”
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