My how far the world has progressed in a century’s worth of air shows. From a single passenger oak-and-poplar, fabric, and cast-iron-engine monoplane displayed at the Grand Palais in 1909 to today’s sleek composite and titanium 787 and mammoth 762-passenger A350. One hundred years of steady progress has changed the dynamics of air travel in every respect. As companies like ATI and its innovative customers continue to push improved materials into new frontiers, the boundaries and possibilities of aerospace expand with it.

Just three months shy of the first Paris Air Show, an airplane-obsessed Frenchman by the name of Auguste Louis Blériot had already built, tested, and destroyed numerous airplane designs, draining a small fortune in the process. The inventor of automobile headlights was determined to get his ideas off the ground or literally die trying...

Outlook recently caught up with ATI Aerospace General Manager Chris Perryman. Perryman has an extensive background in both metals and aerospace, including 24 years working with nickel-based and titanium-based alloys for ATI Allvac. During his 31 years in the metals industry, Chris says that he has never seen a company with ATI’s unique breadth of alloys and forms. In the following interview, Perryman discusses the market sector approach, ATI’s products, and how they benefit its aerospace customers...

ATI has been a world leader in the development and manufacture of mission-critical metallics, including titanium and titanium alloys, nickel-based alloys and superalloys and specialty alloys, for more than five decades. ATI Aerospace integrates Allegheny Technologies Incorporated (ATI) historic aerospace capabilities to offer aerospace customers a variety of proven metallic and manufacturing resources needed to make commercial and military rotary aircraft, and the turboshaft engines that power them, in the 21st century.

Materials produced by ATI for rotary aircraft are used for very specific applications that take advantage of their unique attributes. ATI’s innovative specialty metals solutions are used in the critical components of erosion strips, strap packs, rotary hubs, structural components, belly armor and turboshaft engines in commercial and military helicopters. Our product breadth includes high-performance alloys, such as titanium, superalloys, stainless and specialty steels and tungsten materials...

A series of innovative machining solutions for the new generation of aerospace materials are the latest rewards to be reaped from the long-established relationship between Messier-Dowty (a SAFRAN group company), one of the world’s leading manufacturers of aircraft landing gear systems, and ATI Stellram.

Messier-Dowty’s landing gear are in service on more than 19,500 aircraft making more than 35,000 landings every day. The company supplies 33 airframe manufacturers and supports 2,000 operators of large commercial aircraft, regional and business aircraft, military aircraft and helicopters.

ATI Stellram demonstrated its extensive cutting tool know-how as part of a research program by Messier-Dowty to evaluate the use of new metals, in particular, titanium-based alloys such as ATI 5553™ for Boeing. The special project challenged the business unit’s mission critical metallics team to identify a range of strategies for producing high-performance machining solutions...

Visible to the naked eye, the International Space Station (ISS) slings around the globe at 27,724 kilometers per hour, approximately 350 kilometers above Astrium’s rocket engine test facility in Möckmühl, Germany. But Propulsion Engineer Martin Riehle’s eyes are focused earthward today as he leads a tour of the company’s bustling facility, a high tech wonderland of alloy thrusters and other shiny space-bound equipment hidden in one square kilometer of German woods.

The space engine expert and his colleagues designed and tested the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), dubbed “Jules Verne,” which successfully ferried vital propellants, food, water and equipment to the ISS in April 2008. Once docked, the ATV used its four main engines (manufactured for the European Space Agency program by U.S.-based Aerojet) in a re-boost maneuver to correct the station’s orbit. These thrusters compensated for a regular loss of altitude due to drag and helped the ISS avoid collisions with space debris...

JOHN SIMS
President

PARRY WALBORN
Vice President — Commercial

KIRK RICHARDSON
Editor


Copyright ©2009 ATI Wah Chang. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this newsletter by any means, in whole or in part, without written permission is prohibited by law. Outlook is published quarterly by ATI Wah Chang. The newsletter contains information on reactive and refractory metals, including hafnium, niobium, titanium, vanadium and zirconium, as well as chemicals. The properties listed herein are average values based on laboratory and field test data from a number of sources. They are indicative only of the results obtained in such tests and should not be considered as guaranteed maximums or minimums. The starburst logo and ATI Wah Chang are registered trademarks of ATI Properties, Inc.

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