Titanium Circular Production Webinar

High value engineering components, such as those based on titanium used in aerospace applications, are produced from their metallic ores through energy intensive reduction and alloying processes. They are then converted to state-of-the-art components by subjecting the material to energy intensive complex non-linear thermo-mechanical processing that results in heterogeneous microstructure, non-uniform mechanical properties, part distortion and residual stress. This necessitates significantly larger dimensions than the final geometry to be manufactured before over 70% of the material is machined away to gain the final required shape of the component and retain the ‘optimum’ microstructure and property set necessary for in-service performance.

This expensive and wasteful approach has led to a sector-wide effort to produce components with more homogeneous microstructures and property distributions from less material. For example, many emerging powder-derived manufacturing routes have been explored extensively over recent years. Emerging manufacturing techniques such as precision investment casting and additive manufacturing have advantages over forging in terms of material and energy usage and speed of manufacture, but they cannot produce the high integrity properties required for many structure-critical applications. For now, and an unforeseeable future, forging is here to stay, but it needs to have a 21st century makeover to be more agile, economical, less wasteful with better performing products.

In this presentation two key elements are explored – 1. near-net shape manufacturing techniques such as flow and shear forming and 2. the digitisation of forging and forming. From a sustainability standpoint, both near-net manufacturing and a digital-twin of the microstructure during forging and press performance will enable the supply chain to DO MORE WITH LESS material by providing higher confidence in location-specific properties or utilising the press more efficiently (i.e., using less energy) to achieve the property goals of the design. Some examples will be given in the presentation.