Steels have found wide application in modem aircraft and are the profile materials in some structures. They are used when a high specific strength, rigidity, fatigue limit, and high-temperature strength are required, for example, in the production of wing bars, longerons, ribs, landing gear parts, and gear transmission mechanisms. Steels used in the aircraft industry should possess high parameters of fracture toughness, crack resistance under static and cyclic loads, and corrosion resistance (for the all-climatic variant) with preservation of a high adaptability to manufacturing (weldability, forgeability, processability).Many years of experience with the use of steel 30KhGSN2A in the aircrat~ industry has shown that under the existing manufacturing process it possesses a good reliability at a fracture toughness Kic = 2430-3115 N/mm 3/2 and an ultimate rupture strength cry= 1600-1850N/ram 2. With an increase in the strength of the material the reliability characteristics are hard to maintain at a high level.In the last ten years, the minimum strength level of medium-alloy steels has been increased to cy~ = 1950 N/mm 2 as a result of extensive fundamental research. New sparingly alloyed high-strength structural weldable steels VKS-8 (%--1800 -2000 N/ram 2 ) and VKS-9 (or r = 1950 -2150 N/mm 2 ) have been developed (Table 1). They possess high strength and are not inferior to steel 30KhGSN2A in crack resistance, even exceeding it in some cases. This has become possible due to the realization of a complex approach to improving the properties of the material, which consists of modernizing the metallurgical production process and choosing an optimum alloying set and regimes of heat treatment [I -3]. The level of the reliability parameters (the toughness, the resistance to corrosion cracking, the fatigue, and other characteristics) depends on many factors, namely, the quality of the metal, its structural and chemical inhomogeneity related with the dendrite segregation in the ingot due to the metallurgical production, the presence of micropores and nonmetallic inclusions that can play the role of primary microcracks and fracture initiators, and the presence of harmful impurities that decrease the cohesion strength over grain boundaries or other interfaces.A high fracture toughness can only be attained in a highpurity metal with respect to sulfur, phosphorus, and nonfer-
IAll-Russia Institute of Aircraft Materials, Moscow, Russia.rous metal impurities (such as arsenic, tin, antimony) with a low content of nonmetallic inclusions. It has been shown in [1,2] that in a high-strength steel with relatively high sulfur and phosphorus concentrations (0.007-0.009%), embrittlement can occur not only by the adsorption of these impurities on grain boundaries (accompanied by grain boundary embrittlement) but also by two other mechanisms. It has been established that the harmful impurities can segregate on the "carbide-matrix" and "fine nonmetallic inclusions-matrix" interphase boundaries. This causes fine-dimple fracture with a low m...