Low cost refractory castable die development for titanium sheet superplastic forming

Fiber Reinforced Refractory Castable (FRRC) is an innovative material solution to manufacture SPF tools for forming titanium alloy sheets. Indeed, FRRC are able to conserve good mechanical properties up to 900°C. Fiber reinforcement allows to improve mechanical properties and to avoid a catastrophic failure. Moreover, constitutive laws can be considered to reproduce the FRRC’s mechanical behaviour when using FEM codes. As a consequence, it is now possible to proceed to a numerical design of SPF tools that are based on FRRC. Following this route, large SPF tools have been designed, manufactured and tested under industrial conditions. Successful results have been obtained in the field of forming TA6V sheets.