Fabrication of Lightweight Sandwich Structural Components with Superplastic Forming/Diffusion Bonding Technology

In the present study, design and forming process of fabricating titianium lightweight components are developed with applicaton of superplastic forming and diffusion bonding technology. SPF/DB(Superplastic forming/Diffusion bonding) technology is one of the advanced technologies to reduce production cost and weight and currently applied to aircrafts and space launchers in foreign countries. The present study constructs an analysis model to predict superplastic forming behavior of titanium alloy, which is well known for its resistance to deform. The experimental results show the forming of titanium lightweight sandwich structure is successfully performed from 3 sheets of Ti-6Al-4V. The results demonstrate that the developed technology to process design of SPF/DB by the finite element method can be applied to various types of components.