♦ nivek ♦ Posted May 2, 2018 Share Posted May 2, 2018 PNNL Creates Light-Weight Metal Quote PNNL (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) Creates Light-Weight Metal Posted: Apr 30, 2018 5:43 PM PDTUpdated: Apr 30, 2018 5:43 PM PDT Posted by Kaitlyn Karmout, Reporter RICHLAND:"Friction Stir Dovetailing"- Have you ever heard of that? Probably not…That's the name of a project the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is working on. This new project is a machine that is able to combine steel and aluminum in order to create a lighter-weight metal for military vehicles. ..snipped kL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♦ Fuego ♦ Posted May 3, 2018 Share Posted May 3, 2018 Very cool! Being a metallurgy geek, this is fascinating. It is still primarily a mechanical bond, and the weld created by the tungsten carbide tip is super thin, but it increases the strength of the join a lot. Here are a couple more links https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359646218300538 https://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=4502 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pantheory Posted May 3, 2018 Share Posted May 3, 2018 Yes, very cool. Steel is a combination of iron and carbon and requires special processing to make it. Aluminum is much less dense than steel/ iron so it would float on iron in a combined molten state. When mixed, aluminum would float to the top in the process of cooling, so I expect that the process of combining the two would require a great deal of sophistication and ingenuity to create an evenly distributed alloy of the desired strength and weight. In a weightless environment such mixing of dissimilar metals into a new alloy would seemingly be easier to accomplish. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pantheory Posted May 3, 2018 Share Posted May 3, 2018 5 hours ago, Fuego said: Very cool! Being a metallurgy geek, this is fascinating. It is still primarily a mechanical bond, and the weld created by the tungsten carbide tip is super thin, but it increases the strength of the join a lot. Here are a couple more links https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359646218300538 https://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=4502 I see from your links that the process being discussed does not mix the two metals together excepting at a thin welding-like interface. This is quite different from a uniformly combined alloy which is what I was thinking of. I guess that bolting or riveting the two metals together would not produce the desired strength. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♦ nivek ♦ Posted May 3, 2018 Author Share Posted May 3, 2018 PNNL is about an hours drive north of me based at the Hanford Nuclear (Range) Facility in Richland, Washington State. Their public areas are cool to visit. They also have 'Road Trip' type exhibits wherein they bring a specific area of research or general interest to places such as Public Libraries. Most of what happens at Labs is going to be covered by more layers of secrecy than we might know. What they do share as in OP is fascinating. kL 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aries256 Posted January 1, 2019 Share Posted January 1, 2019 Hmmmm I wonder if I could hammer arrow heads out of this stuff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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