Future Applications by JSawyer

Justin Sawyer
Ryan Hoffman
Peter Sohl
December 26th, 2005

Future Applications of Amorphous Metals

In the future the United States military as well as other developed countries will have better-armed military’s through the use of Amorphous metals. These highly versatile substances can be used as armor for tanks, trucks, and even for the soldiers themselves. These metals can also be used for the weapons as well as the armor.
Amorphous metals are the new frontier for our world in terms of advances in metallurgy and the way of the future. These metals reflect and redirect almost all of the energy put into them, making them perfect for bouncing bullets right off of tanks and other vehicles. They also have reduced friction properties. In the future, when these materials have been analyzed enough by scientists and the military decides to upgrade its armor, amorphous metals will be the largest upgrade the military has ever seen. These new compounds are corrosive resistant, and are extremely strong and durable. The United Sates military will be able to have their equipment survive in even more hospitable conditions and will have more soldiers returning home from the added strength and protection provided by amorphous metals, the metal of the future.
In the future the military will have to cast these metals into the different shapes and sizes that they need. It used to be extremely expensive to cast these versatile metals. This enormous cost was due to the fact that these metals are highly heat resistant and needed to be heated up to extreme temperatures to melt them down into a molten state for casting. Scientists have now came up with new amorphous metal compounds that can be cast at much lower temperatures, similar to conventional glassy materials. In the future, solidification of amorphous metal materials will be done using many different procedures. Some of those procedures will be water quenching a melt in a quartz tube, casting in a copper mold, high pressure die casting, arc melting in a water-cooled crucible, uni-directional solidification, and suction casting.
Amorphous metallic coatings are proving to be corrosion resistant and tough similar to using whole sheets of amorphous metals. In the future, amorphous metals don’t have to be the entire piece of the metal but can be sprayed on to other substances forming a metal coating and drastically improving the previous materials strength. These amorphous metal materials are applied using a thermal spray technique known as high-velocity-oxygen-fuel (HVOF), which produces dense, pore-free, hard, and extremely tough coatings. The liquid metal-coated materials are transformed into an amorphous nano-crystalline structure upon finishing or once they are put into service. When liquid metal coatings are subjected to wear, in service, they undergo the unique metamorphic transformation that induces surface hardening. Contrary to the traditional concept of wear resulting from usage, amorphous metallic coatings get harder, slicker, and more wear resistant as they are put into service. This means that a sheet of metal with an amorphous metal coating when shot with a gun will not become weaker or brittle in that area, but will become stronger. This mean that military equipment can be abused even greater by taking trucks and tanks straight through salt marshes and not having to worry about the metal corroding and the replacement of that corroded piece, as well as not having to patch up bullet holes as frequently on helicopters and tanks, and other military equipment. This will also mean monumental strides in military achievements, and will also mean the prolonging of life for military, as well as some consumer equipment.
Besides the wide array of military applications, amorphous metals can also be applied to more conventional purposes. For the various amorphous metal compositions, which are under investigation, potential applications include bio-medical applications based on high corrosion resistance, electro-processes, small mechanical parts, and magnetic applications. As an example, studies of high strength aluminum alloys are being carried out for YKK (a zipper manufacturer). Amorphous metals will greatly increase the United States military strength and offer a great deal more to the consumer in the future and will save American lives.