• Planes cannot do without solid titanium, whose prices are soaring under the effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine and of which Russia is a big extractor.

  • In Toulouse, the “Mama” project team has just unveiled a new manufacturing process for aircraft parts that saves 30% of this rare metal.

  • If these lower cost parts are certified, Airbus will first use them on the A350.

An Airbus A350 contains 15% titanium, in particular in its "critical parts", those which must be absolutely robust, such as the engine masts or the fuselage arches.

However, the price of this metal, which is as stainless as it is complicated to extract, has soared by 50% in three years and by 38% since the start of the year alone.

In addition, 22% of European imports come from Russia, 45% from China.

That's why “Mama”* had flair.

Launched in 2018, well before the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, this scientific project by the Saint-Exupéry Institute for Technological Research (IRT) in Toulouse aimed to reduce the cost of titanium parts for aerostructures by “30 to 40% ".

For "a more frugal aviation, which reconciles economy and ecology", specifies Nadia Pellefigue, vice-president in charge of Innovation for the region,

"Very high temperatures"

A little less than four years later, and at the right time given the international context, the team has just unveiled its first "demonstrator" in titanium alloy, a life-size reproduction of a section of the fuselage frame of an Airbus A350.

The piece, which must be photographed from afar because of industrial espionage, is strictly identical to the original.

It obviously has the same shape, weighs exactly the same weight.

However, assures Simon Perusin, head of the materials division at the IRT, it has made it possible to “save 30% of titanium”.

In fact, the saving of metal was achieved upstream, in the "forging" as the specialists say, in short in the development of blanks and in the manufacturing process.

The tests were carried out on presses at the Aubert & Duval factory in Pamiers in Ariège.

Titanium was melted for the first time at "very high temperature", above 1,000°C, "allowing easier flow of the metal during its shaping".

The idea is to produce finer blanks, closer to the final part, and therefore to reduce “chips” and titanium waste.

It now remains for the experimental parts to pass the stage of drastic checks by the aviation safety authorities to verify that they have the same mechanical properties as their models.

But the first tests are “very good”.

And Airbus is rubbing its hands.

"We hope to be able to use these parts from 2025-2026 on the A350 and then on the A320", indicates Damien Proust, head of propulsion engineering at the aircraft manufacturer.

* Metallic Advances Materials for Aeronautics.

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  • Toulouse

  • Innovation

  • Science

  • Airbus

  • Aeronautics

  • War in Ukraine

  • Occitania