Quote:
Originally Posted by Xist
What about titanium threads?
|
Aluminum has a better specific yield strength (in 7xxx series alloys at least), but has worse fatigue characteristics. However I don't think many people are concerned with a fatiguing car chassis, and even less for body panels.
In F1 I imagine they care about the stiffness a little more which is why they use titanium rather than aluminum. Generally though if you have any kind of sane budget titanium should only be used on critical components like valves and the reciprocating assembly, where you need all of strength, lightweight, fatigue resistance, stiffness, and high temperature performance. Aluminum accomplishes strong and lightweight for much less money.