Innovative Materials for Highly Loaded Wear Application in Arresting Gear Tailhook Components

The United States Navy (USN) currently uses a low-alloyed high strength steels, 4330V, for tailhook (shoe) applications. Unfortunately, there have been issues with the wear and thermal resistivity of 4330V that have led to short component lifetimes of 100-200 uses, as well as significant manufacturing waste and scrap losses due to discontinuities in coatings. In an ongoing Phase II SBIR program, QuesTek Innovations has developed a low-cost, high-strength, high-fracture-tough, SCC resistant alloy Ferrium® M54™ that could have a dramatic life improvement over 4330V and eliminate the need for a HVOF wear coating. In the Phase I program QuesTek plans to evaluate the wear resistance of the baseline alloy (4330V coated and uncoated) compared to Ferrium M54 to demonstrate the feasibility of eliminating the HVOF coating currently being used. In addition, high temperature tensile tests will be completed to demonstrate the superior high temperature resistance of M54 compared to 4330V. The Phase I program proposed herein details a plan to demonstrate the feasibility of replacement of the 4330V alloy with M54 based on improved wear resistance, thermal resistance, and resistance to stress corrosion cracking while eliminating the need for HVOF coatings.