MIT just 3D‑printed aluminum that’s five times stronger—future engines, unlocked.

 

 

MIT just 3D‑printed aluminum that’s five times stronger—future engines, unlocked.

MIT engineers have developed a 3D‑printable aluminum alloy that is five times stronger than conventionally cast aluminum and remains stable at temperatures up to 400 °C. Using machine learning, the team rapidly searched through potential compositions of aluminum mixed with other elements, reducing more than a million possible combinations to just 40 promising candidates. This approach identified an alloy whose strength derives from a high volume fraction of very small, densely packed precipitates in its microstructure. To realize this design physically, the researchers used laser powder bed fusion, a 3D‑printing process that rapidly melts and solidifies thin layers of alloy powder. The fast cooling inherent to this method locks in the fine precipitate structure that conventional casting, with its slower cooling rates, cannot achieve.

 

Tests on printed samples confirmed that the new alloy is not only five times stronger than its cast counterpart but also about 50% stronger than alloys designed using traditional computational simulations alone. Because aluminum is lighter and cheaper than titanium, the printable alloy could enable more efficient jet engine fan blades, advanced vacuum pumps, high‑end automotive parts, and improved cooling components for data centers. The work, led by Mohadeseh Taheri‑Mousavi and colleagues at MIT, Paderborn University, and Carnegie Mellon University, demonstrates how combining machine learning–guided materials design with additive manufacturing can open new pathways for high‑performance, application‑ready metal alloys.

 

References (APA style)

Chu, J. (2025, December 23). MIT engineers create 3D-printable aluminum 5 times stronger than conventional alloys. SciTechDaily.

Taheri-Mousavi, S. M., Xu, M., Hengsbach, F., Houser, C., Ge, Z., Glaser, B., Wei, S., Schaper, M., LeBeau, J. M., Olson, G. B., & Hart, A. J. (2025). Additively manufacturable high-strength aluminum alloys with coarsening-resistant microstructures achieved via rapid solidification. Advanced Materials.