Mitsubishi Materials, NIMS Develop New Alloy for Turbine

Mitsubishi Materials and National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) announced on Friday they developed forging alloy material for airplane engine with world top heat resistance. Mitsubishi Materials developed the technology for ingot making, forging and heat treatment with the heat resistance nickel-cobalt alloy, for which NIMS has composition patent. They try to commercialize for airplane engine and gas turbine.

The alloy contains molybdenum, tungsten, aluminium, titanium, carbon, boron and zirconium. They focused on the forging property of cobalt and titanium and increased the contents.

Mitsubishi Materials developed the process technology including the melting process at Okegawa plant in Saitama. The process includes vacuum induction melting, electroslag remelting and vacuum arc remelting to make the ingot.

They succeeded the high performance heat resistance, which is 50 degrees centigrade or more resistance than traditional 720Li grade forging alloy for air plane engine. The new alloy also has homogeneous fine grain with 10 micrometers diameter. They can provide turbine disc material with 440 millimeters width.