Kobe Steel to Supply 800kg Titanium Alloy for HTV Fuel Tank

Kobe Steel announced on Wednesday the firm received an order for 800-kilogram titanium alloy used as HTV (H2 Transfer Vehicle) fuel tanks. HTV is a transporting machine to carry commodity goods and experiment facilities to space stations, developed by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency). Japanese government has recently cultivated domestic aerospace industry and Japanese heavy industry companies have tried to develop made-in-Japan passenger airplanes and deep-sea vehicles along the policy. Titanium will be used for the parts such as engines. Kobe Steel aims to expand order receipt for forged titanium products and original titanium alloys.Kobe Steel’s titanium alloy will be used for 4 tanks to carry fuels for HTV’s main engine, each of which is spherically shaped with about 1 meter diameter. Kobe Steel will manufacture 64-series titanium alloy, which contains 6% aluminium and 4% vanadium, into a 100kg-weigt hemisphere by the hot forging process at Takasago works, Hyogo, Japan. The products will be sold to IHI Aerospace, Japanese aerospace machine maker.Kobe Steel is an only Japanese maker to have an integrated process of titanium fabricated products from melting to forging. The firm can supply not only billets but forged products such as rings, discs and hemispheres. The firm’s sales of titanium products for aerospace applications totaled approximately 6 billion yen through fiscal 2007 (Apr07-Mar08), which represented about 15% in the total sales of Kobe Steel’s titanium business unit.