INDUSTRY FOCUS MILITARY, AEROSPACE & DEFENCE
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Edward Arata, brazing engineer at Morgan Advanced Materials’ Braze Alloys Business, explains how braze alloys play
their part in safe, reliable and sustainable space exploration
S
pace exploration has come on in leaps and bounds since the first artificial satellite,
Sputnik 1, was propelled into space in 1957. Since then, the world has witnessed marvels such as the moon landing, the space shuttle programme of the 1970s, and the launch of the International Space Station. Many may not realise it, but space
exploration has improved lives and the global economy through, for example: simple weather forecasting, broadcasting TV and radio, predicting natural disasters, monitoring for fertile land, forecasting sea level patterns, and even aiding research in muscular atrophy. The space industry was reportedly worth $384 million USD in 2017, growing at a rate of 7.4%. Morgan Stanley sees the industry growing to where it will be worth $1.1 trillion USD by 2040.
There are, however, challenges – not only
from those who believe the resources could be better used on immediate threats to society (like clean water, famine and poverty), but also internal operational challenges including the need for it to become safer and more sustainable. A huge part of solving this challenge is in brazing alloys.
WHAT IS BRAZING? Put simply, brazing joins two metals by heating and melting a filler (alloy) that bonds to the two pieces of metal and joins them. The filler must have a melting temperature below that of the metal pieces. The use of braze alloys in space equipment
is mission critical as they allow sensors to be mounted as close as possible to engines to measure and monitor output and feed data back
to operators. As an example, two of Morgan Advanced Materials’ braze alloys, RI-46 and RI-49, were specifically engineered and used by NASA on the Space Shuttle Main Engine, also known as the RS25. RI-46 specifically was developed as a
replacement for the existing Nioro braze alloy, which is comprised of 82/18 Au/Ni (gold/nickel). RI-46 contains much less gold, adding in copper and manganese instead. This helped make the braze alloy significantly less dense and provided crucial weight savings, but it was also still operable between -240˚C to 700˚C. In addition to this, RI-46 and RI-49 have
also been adopted for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), a vehicle that is planned to take a crewed mission to Mars. Developing new braze alloys is therefore as much about performance as it is sustainability.
SPACE!
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