There is a continued need within the aerospace and space communities to increase the structural efficiency of launch vehicles in order to increase the payload and/or lower fuel usage. Many of these structures have critical stiffness demands because of deflection, buckling, or acoustic/vibration damping. Aluminum-beryllium (Al-Be) is a candidate material for many such structural components because it has a very high stiffness to weight ratio (second only to pure beryllium) and has superior formability and weldability as compared to beryllium. The strength to weight ratio of commercial Al-Be is superior to aluminum alloys (7050 and 6061-T6) that are currently used for aerospace and space applications. Plasma spray forming of Al-Be alloys is being investigated at Los Alamos National Laboratory for producing axial symmetric components for aerospace and space applications. Plasma spray forming of beryllium and beryllium alloys was investigated during the 1960's and 70's by Union Carbide Speedway Laboratories and the Atomic Weapons Establishment for producing axial symmetric launch vehicle components for defense related applications. Information is presented on the thermal and mechanical properties of plasma sprayed AlBeMet which is a commercial Al-Be alloy produced by Brush Wellman Inc.

Directed light fabrication (DLF) is a rapid fabrication process that fuses gas delivered metal powders within a focal zone of a laser beam to produce fully dense, near-net shape, 3D metal components from a computer generated solid model. Computer controls dictate the metal deposition pathways, and no preforms or molds are required to generate complex sample geometries with accurate and precise tolerances. The DLF technique offers unique advantages over conventional thermomechanical processes or thermal spray processes in that many labor and equipment intensive steps can be avoided to produce components with fully dense microstructures. Moreover, owing to the flexibility in power distributions of lasers, a variety of materials have been processed, ranging from aluminum alloys to tungsten, and including intermetallics such as M05Si3. Since DLF processing offers unique capabilities and advantages for the rapid fabrication of complex metal components, an examination of the microstructural development hhas been performed in order to define and optimize the processed materials. Solidification studies of DLF processing have demonstrated that a continuous liquid/solid interface is maintained while achieving high constant cooling rates that can be varied between 10 to 10 5 Ks-1 and solidification growth rates ranging up to 10-2 ms-1.