Abstract
This paper is to briefly outline the recent research and development activities in the field of superplasticity and SPF/DB applications among academic and industrial community in Taiwan. Academic research activities can be roughly divided into material development and SPF/DB experiments. The material development emphasizes the development of fine-grained materials, resulting in high-temperature superplastic 7075/7475 Al-Zn-Mg alloys and low-temperature superplastic 2090/8090 Al-Li alloys, as well as several high-strain-rate superplastic aluminum matrix composites. The thermomechanical treatments involved include (1) conventional rolling and reheat method, (2) equal channel angular extrusion, (3) reciprocal extrusion, (4) asymmetrical rolling, (5) wedge-shape forging, and (6) directional solidification plus extrusion. The SPF/DB places more weight on forming practices and applications. Titanium base alloys and stainless steel are of more interest. Major breakthrough includes the successful fabrication of high-pressure vessels, spherical coolant containers for infrared detectors, floating balls for level control in chemical industry, internal gas blow forming using inorganic powders, small-scaled SPF/DB straight- or arc-rib reinforced hollow structures, SPF/DB golf heads, and certain special assemblies for electronic products. Limited applications on production lines are undergoing, e.g., the front-head covers for missiles by Military Institute and turbine engine blades by Shan-Tung Aerospace Company. Efforts in applying to titanium golf heads have once been popular, but become less intense due to the recent drop of sale price. The application in electronic industry seems to have promising potential. Finally, the production of extra fine-grained aluminum alloys has attracted the attention of local aluminum company recently.
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