Light Weight High Stiffness Materials for Berylium Replacement

The replacement of Berylium, for toxicity reasons, is an issue facing Europe and the US. Berylium is a popular engineering material because of it light weight and high stiffness. The Phase II program being proposed is one capatlizing on the Phase I effortin achieving light weight materials with Moduli in excess of 26 million on high volume reinforced SiC with an Al matrix. Also in development is other light weight, high stiffness materials with even higher moduli. This Phase II program represents theclassic BMDO investment- a small company with an emerging technology, teamed with experienced and committed industrial partners with current access to multi-million dollars markets and applications, developing a need product for the global market today.The successful completion of this program will enable Powdermet to aid the BMDO EKV program and develop high volume reinforced composites with significant market opportunity. There are several aerospace and commercial areas targeted, which include and arenot limited to golf clubs, hard disk drives, and aerospace structures.