Titan 6–4 hemispheres for SCA system of ariane 5

Funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Ariane 5 Program has been developed under the responsibility of the CNES, the French Space Agency. Attitude Control of the Ariane 5 Mission is carried out by the SCA (Systeme Controle d'Attitude), developed by Astrium-Space Transportation (Astrium-ST). It is the blow down hydrazine system using gaseous nitrogen as pressurant. The ARIANE 5 -SCA Tank - Fig.1 - is manufactured from TiAl6V4-hemispheres essentially performed via Super Plastic Forming (SPF) process. The tank shell wall thickness achieved need not to be mechanically reworked except small domains prepared for welding. Vis-a-vis the common tank production which employs hemispheres resulted by mechanical milling out of forged shell, the SPF provides certainly saving on milling efforts as well as significant reduction on material wasting. Also shown that is for tank component submitted to space application, the SPF as production method commonly undergoes development and verification efforts in engineering elaborating focused on Test-shell, Qualification-shell and such which provides samples for material strength and technological verifications. Enclosing is also a brief overall display addressing successful use of SPF-shell in producing tanks for the space flight today. Up to now more then 100 Tanks have been manufactured by Astrium-ST and > 90 Tanks were successful used in Ariane 5 launchers with various missions.