Making Titanium Demisable through Controlled Porosity and Functional Coatings

Kurzfassung

Two strategies to make titanium demisable for space applications are presented: additive manufacturing with engineered porosity and functional coatings on conventional grade 5 titanium. Mechanical tests show a highly predictable mechanical property dependence to porosity, enabling locally load-optimized mixed-porosity parts, whose additive manufacturing is demonstrated with a reference satellite bracket. Plasma exposure experiments on porous, solid, and coated samples are compared, showing that both porosity and coatings substantially improve titanium's demise behavior, which opens the use of titanium in spacecraft structures without demise concerns.