DOW-UAP-D117, AAWSAP DIRD, Metallic Glasses for Aerospace Applications, December 2009

This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD surveys metallic glasses as a potentially important class of aerospace materials and describes their amorphous structure as offering very high strength and unusual manufacturing advantages, but also significant drawbacks, especially poor ductility and fatigue resistance. The document concludes that the most promising aerospace applications are likely to come from metallic-glass-matrix composites rather than single-phase glasses, because these composites can retain high strength while greatly improving fracture toughness and fatigue performance, potentially enough to substitute for high-strength steels in some space-limited structural uses. At the same time, the report judges that broader aerospace use will depend on substantial progress over the next 20–50 years in alloy design, processing, and especially the development of lightweight systems, including aluminum-based options.