Superplastic Forming of Duplex Stainless Steel for Aerospace Part

In this study, the high temperature forming behavior of duplex stainless steel has been characterized and the outer shell of a combustion chamber was fabricated with pressure difference of hot gas. It consists of two parts which are the outer skin made of stainless steel to sustain the internal pressure and the inner shell made of copper alloy for regenerative cooling channels. Two outer skins partitioned to half with respect to the symmetric axis was prepared by hot gas forming process with a maximum pressure of 7MPa following to FEM analysis. For inner layer, copper alloy was machined for cooling channels and then placed in the gas pressure welding fixture. It is shown that the optimum condition of gas pressure welding is 7MPa at 890 degree C, for one hour. EDX analysis and scanning electron microscope micrograph confirm the atomic diffusion process is observed at the interface and copper atoms diffuse into steel, while iron and chrome atoms diffuse into copper. The result shows that the manufacturing method with superplastic forming and gas pressure welding of steel and copper alloy has been successful for near net shape manufacturing of scaled combustion chamber of launch vehicle.