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New Titanium Alloy Bends the Rules
BinaryForces writes "According to Yahoo Takashi Saito and his colleagues at the Toyota Central Research and Development Laboratories in Japan have developed a super alloy with unheard of strength and flexibility. It's not only light, but it can be stretched to more than 2.5 times its original length and return to its previous size. Heat causes almost no expansion. It can be bent and straightened repeatedly without becoming brittle. And the cool part is it was developed using high power computation instead of the traditional trial and error method. More details at Nature's website."
Its light, its strong, and returns to shape. I could see how car suspensions could be made infinitely lighter with such a metal. Imagine, not needing springs anymore, the suspension links ARE the springs ;)
Things like this are what will make electric cars and extremely effecient cars possible, I think.
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The specifics of this metal sound almost fantastical. Are we so sure that this is even possible? Despite the fact that it was produced using computer modeling (whoa, what a neat Idea. Wish I'd thought of that one).
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- Missed it by that much!
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This stuff is tough, flexible, light, and easily recovers after being deformed. Seems to me that it could rival the theoretical nanotube composites, as material for a space elevator.
Yummy titanium Katana for Hiro!
meh.
Damned slashdot effect.
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"Takashi Saito and his colleagues at the Toyota Central Research and Development Laboratories in Japan have developed a super alloy with unheard of strength and flexibility. It's not only light, but it can be stretched to more than 2.5 times its original length and return to its previous size. "
I allready have a material like that, but it isn't a metal. (Well it can feel like one)
... and their ocean-dwelling UFO-crashing alien masters sure have been up to some good work lately!
...
Seriously though, how long until we see this metal in Oakleys, I wonder
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The articles specifically mention use in ultralightweight springs, as one example, or other "precision instruments for use in rugged environments such as in outer space". My question is would this new alloy be so limited to these applications or could an alloy like this affect the design of buildings or bridges? Or have greater effect in making lightweight cars or other common products.
I am neither a metallugist or an engineer, but I could only imagine this being used in a few years for just about everything much as "aircraft aluminum" is used in making canoes and ski poles.
I'd think the uses for this could be very far reaching if it can be made affordable enough for common use. I see lighter more durable touring bikes, motorcycles, cars, planes from jets to gliders, to just about anything made of metal I'd suppose.
Are there any reasons why this metal wouldn't be a good choice for other applications?
My own glasses are that Flexon stuff that you can practically tie in knots, but it doesn't hold original shape *too* well and will break after doing it a few hundred times. Now imagine glasses frames that are made of this stuff.
This sig no verb.
it can be stretched to more than 2.5 times its original length and return to its previous size
Yeah, but do it too often and you'll go blind.
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And that's just a couple of things off the top of my head.
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One word: Patents.
Actually it's difficult to say what Toyota will do to make licensing difficult for 3rd parties. While they obviously have a vested interest in making competetors pay for it (if use it at all), probably much less so in keeping Girard Perregaux from using it in their chrongraphs, or Volkl building better skis with it. Point in fact, Toyota is the only company in the world with the infrastructure to scale-up their hybrid engines (actually the only company with a hybrid program of any commercial merit apart from Honda), yet they are talking about licensing the technology to their competetors (like GM), apparently in a manner fairly affordable...
Have faith in the Nippon-jin :)
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
"...their titanium-based alloys exhibit "super" properties, such as ultrahigh strength and super elasticity. The new materials could prove useful..." (emphasis added)
This sounds to me like they created multiple alloys with different properties and not a single miracle alloy with all of these properties. I may be wrong but since I cannot get through to read the nature story I can't tell for sure one way of the other.
How about bunches of muscle fibers made out of these alloys?
Maybe this is the alloy that the spacecraft in Sphere was constructed from.
I have a really funny feeling that it all start with one of the guys in the lab looking at the computer and saying, "A keyboard, how quaint"; next thing you know we got transparent alumi,er, a new Titanium Ally.
g
This is proof of what I always suspected: they are trading prisoners of war and civilians for alien technology. There was talk of this stuff since they found some of it in the Roswell space craft!
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I took the page out of my cache and hosted it on my machine for now. http://128.119.148.139/default.html I'll take it down once the site stops getting hammered.
It could depend on how they define "strong." From the article (thanks for the mirror!), I think they mean tensile strength; that is, they take the ends of a rod or sheet and pull them apart until it breaks. This is very different from load bearing strength (holding a weight in the middle while suspended from the sides).
Because it's so flexible, would the stuff stretch under strain? This would be bad news in, say, semi-trailer beds.
It doesn't expand in heat, but does it shrink in cold?
Is it soluble in stuff like organic solvents, crude oil, gasoline, water, acidic conditions, etc.?
What kind of wear and tear can it maintain and still be functional?
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein
in my flexon glasses (the bendy toddler proof kind). Neat.
Sleep is for the weak.
Having read the article one finds that the elastic limit for this material is reached at about 2.5% strain. That's PERCENT, as in 2.5 parts in a hundred. As in the metal can be stretched to a length 2.5% greater than it's original length, not 250%!
2.5% is alot though, bigger than any other metal I know of. But the other properties of this material aren't so spiffy. It's stiffness is equal to or less than a number of other Titanium alloys. It's yield stress is also comparable though a bit higher. The total amount of deformation it can take before breaking is about 25% larger.
Bottom line: it doesn't dent easily.
Ayn Rand anyone? For those who've read Atlas Shrugged I'm sure you can conjure something from the 'ole imagination.
If you haven't, I suggest reading it.
-Slip
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Finally, they've invented Rearden Metal. I've been waiting for this. :)
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There is another story about this on PhysicsWeb. The story is short, but has some more technical details.
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