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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."
"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)
That would make them flying cars.
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.
You'll always want springs, they're too useful to get rid of. And as you note, if you made other parts of the suspension do double-duty as springs, well, you still have springs.
The important question isn't to speculate whether you can get rid of springs, it's to speculate whether you can make better springs, either by making them more efficient, or equally efficient with a weight or cost savings. Unfortunately the site is already slashdotted, so I don't know if the article mentions those kind of details, but if it doesn't, it's a huge assumption you're making. Many materials can return to a reasonable facsimilie of their original shape after deformation, but to do so repeatedly over time in a highly predictable and consistent fashion at rates in ranges suited to a suspension system... well, it's almost impossible to beat a plain old cheap steel coils. Even high-end SAE 9254 hot-formed steel racing-grade springs are only a couple hundred bucks for a set of four...
This reminds me of the predictions (I know you're not predicting) that eventually we'd all be driving around in Nitinol ("memory metal") cars that after a fender bender could be popped back into shape with a blow dryer...
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
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.
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