The White House announced on Tuesday, February 25nd, the establishment of the American Lightweight Materials Manufacturing Innovation Institute (ALMMII). Selected by the U.S. Department of Defense under the Lightweight and Modern Metals Manufacturing Innovation (LM3I) solicitation, and led by the collaboration between the Edison Welding Institute, the University of Michigan, and the Ohio State University, this institute brings together the collaborative partnership of the federal government and more than 70 Chicago-based and 60 Detroit-based universities, non-profits and companies, including QuesTek Innovations LLC as a research partner.
 
The ALMMII effort addresses a critical need for affordable and high-performance lightweight metals, as well as advancements in their associated design and manufacturing processes, that will benefit large sectors of the U.S. economy such as metal production, casting and metalworking.

QuesTek’s Chief Science Officer, Dr. Gregory B. Olson, will serve as the leader of “Novel Materials”, one of 15 key technology development pillars that bring together experts within the respective field. Dr. Jason Sebastian, QuesTek’s manager of technology and product development, will serve as one of seven experts in the technology development area of Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME). QuesTek’s unique role and expertise will contribute to the innovative “ecosystem” that draws together the full spectrum of capabilities and spans the entire value chain of lightweight manufacturing.

QuesTek has been developing new breakthrough alloys since 1997 using ICME methodologies and its Materials by Design technology. Four QuesTek high performance steels (Ferrium M54, Ferrium S53, Ferrium C61 and Ferrium C64 steels) were successfully developed and licensed to Carpenter Technology. These Ferrium steels are displacing materials that have been used for decades in demanding applications such as aircraft landing gear, arresting hook shanks and hook points; and helicopter power transmission gears and rotor shafts. The steels also serve oil and gas applications and other industries. In addition, novel alloys based on Al, Ni, Co, Cu, Mo are being designed and developed by QuesTek, based on ICME ensuring successful design and accelerated implementation.

Other members of AMMII with whom QuesTek will be closely collaborating include Northwestern University, Thermo-Calc, Boeing Company, General Electric and Lockheed Martin.