Extrusion Based Processing of Ti Alloys: Feasibility Study
Abstract
This project was a feasibility study to explore the viability of using metal honeycomb technology developed at Georgia Tech as an economical alternative to processing titanium structures of relevance to aerospace applications. In the first part of this program, honeycombs with square prismatic cells were fabricated by extrusion of titanium oxide powder and experiments were conducted to convert the sintered honeycomb to metallic titanium through electrolytic reduction. This approach was pursued to explore extension of the FFC process 1 to electrolysis of this wall ( 300 m) Ti02 structures as the reduction stage of our proposed process. These tests focused on kinetics of titanium reduction because high specific surface area oxide performs can be fabricated using technology developed by the lightweight structures group at Georgia Tech2-4 via extrusion of thin walled, small cell size, honeycomb structures from powders/binder mixtures. During the honeycomb reduction studies, dendritic electrodeposition of titanium was observed to be occurring similar to the Hall process for aluminum. Thus, a series of tests were conducted to determine if high purity titanium could be electrodeposited from a molten salt saturated with titanium ore. Our conclusion was that this process is occurring and because this approach has potential for being of significant economic value, a provisional patent application has been filed.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADA419851
Entities
People
- Dave Mcdowell
- Joe Cochran
- Kon J. Lee
Organizations
- Georgia Tech