Dr Nick Weston, a Research Associate in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at The University of Sheffield, will be presenting a keynote lecture at the 14th World Conference on Titanium being held in Nantes, France between 10th-14th June. Nick will present on “Exploitation of field assisted sintering technology (FAST) for titanium alloys.”
Come along to hear more about the FAST process, the FAST STEP3 project, and meet some of the project partners. For more information about the conference visit https://www.titanium2019.com/
PAPER ABSTRACT
Spark plasma sintering (SPS), or field assisted sintering technology (FAST), is increasingly being applied to engineering alloys and metal-based composites powders and particulates including titanium alloys. FAST is currently being used as (1) a rapid and cost-effective process to consolidate powders of new alloy compositions, in order to investigate phase transformations and deformation mechanisms. This is largely conducted on the small scale by research institutes and universities. However increasingly, (2) FAST is being used to produce aerospace and automotive demonstrator parts such as rocker arms, blades and brake callipers from titanium-based powders, as an alternative to hot isostatic pressing or conventional melt-wrought processing.
FAST has been demonstrated to be an effective intermediate solid-state process for consolidating powder into pre-forged billets from a range of feedstocks including recycled material. Processes such as FAST-forge and FAST-DB have been developed to be hybrid processes that can produce affordable titanium components with forged properties in two steps.In this paper the current status, the emerging developments and challenges of FAST for titanium-based powders and particulates are presented.
