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New Alloy Stronger Than Fe And Ti
SoCalChris writes "According to this article on MSNBC.com, researchers at CalTech have discovered a new alloy that is stronger than steel and titanium, can be cast in a mold like plastic, and sharpened like glass. The first plans for the new alloy are to be used in golf clubs, baseball bats, skis, and cell phone covers."
As they say in the article it isn't anything new. They just make it a bit thicker, why is this even news?
Whew!
thank god we're not looking into using it to make dumb shit like, medical intruments, space applications, etc.
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The big deal in auto safety isn't in getting the vehicle to withstand a violent impact. It's in making it more likely that the passengers will survive such an impact. Ever hear of 'crumple zones'? The idea there is to sacrifice the vehicle, getting it to absorb much of the energy of the impact, in order to improve the passenger's chances of survival.
Would you want to buy a car that would come away from a head-on collision with only minor damage to the vehicle itself, but that would leave the driver splattered all over the interior?
It might be useful for structural parts of a subsonic airliner that is not near the jet engines, like the fuselage.
Hmmm--imagine a 777 weighing 10-15% less than now--we could get a lot more range out of a 777.
" a new alloy that is stronger than steel and titanium"
By mass or by volume? Stronger with reguards to tension, compression, or shear? Or some combination?
Heck, I can think of a building material that is more easily molded than either of those two metals and is actually stronger in many ways. It's called concrete. Just don't try to put it under tension or shear...