"When comparing the tensile yield strengths of titanium and steel, an interesting fact occurs; steel is by-and-large stronger than titanium."
Many people confuse this issue, because they're actually talking about measures of strength/weight ratios, on which titanium does really well. But if you are size limited rather than weight limited, steel is often a better material than titanium even when cost is no object.
And anyway, your original comment suggested someone was totally in the wrong for thinking a 4mm titanium plate was strong, which is obviously incorrect. 4mmm of titanium plate is clearly going to be really strong and resistant. They wouldn't make plane engines from it if it wasn't.
...but they don't! Jet engines can only use titanium for certain low pressure, low temperature, sections. The high temperature parts are made from nickle/iron-based superalloys. And aluminum still gets significant usage, because for many geometries an aluminum part has a better strength/weight ratio.
Like I said, titanium is strong. But it's not magic. Stronger than any aluminum alloy, weaker than commonly used steel alloys. Hitting a 4mm plate of titanium with a hammer just isn't a very special experience. I've done it.
Hitting a 4mm tool steel plate definitely can be a special experience. Because it's so strong and hard that you could easily cause the thing to shatter, sending sharp shards in unpredictable directions...
Titanium has excellent strength to weight properties compared to steel. A 4mm titanium plate would absolutely be dented by common shop hammers. This doesnt mean that "titanium isnt strong" it just means they have different material properties.
But otherwise, yea irrc… Grade5 Ti (6AL4V) is approx equal to ultimate tensile of 303 stainless (extremely common) at 50% the weight.
BUT… Ti doesn’t even get close to 600 steels (like Inconel) or even common 17-4PH, etc.
Indeed, if your design goal is strictly "don't get dented when hit by a hammer", the "strongest" material could easily be a good synthetic rubber!
Bicycle design is a good example of where this matters: steel has a significant fatigue limit, and can endure cyclic stresses below that limit indefinitely. Aluminum has no fatigue limit, so any flexing is inevitably eating away at fatigue life. Thus aluminum bike frames have to be made much stronger and stiffer than otherwise necessary, to avoid bikes breaking unexpectedly due to fatigue. And that in turn means that aluminum bike frames don't have as much of a weight advantage over steel as you'd expect.
One advantage that adds to the potential lightness of aluminum and carbon fiber bike frames is manufacturing method. Aluminum is cheap to machine and hydroform into efficient shapes, and carbon fiber can also be layed up into efficient shapes.
Surly makes (only) steel mountain bikes, and I think there are approx. a... there's a lot of them out there. One reason is that they are inexpensive (relatively) and take a lot of abuse.
Absolutely. What I meant was that while an aluminum bike frame can be lighter than steel, it's not as much lighter than steel than you'd expect. Steel bike frames tend to be only ~15% heavier than aluminum, not 50%.
Personally I bought a steel road because the difference in weight vs the aluminum alternative was small enough that I decided to go with the bike that looked nicer, and would last longer. Besides, I could use to lose a lot more weight than any bike ever could...
Get a child trailer and load it up with groceries or cement! i tried it, the results are.. Surprising
AR500 has a HRC of 47, modulus of 220 GPa, and tensile strength of 1740 MPa. Ti-6Al-4V is 37, 113.8 GPa, and 880 MPa respectively. The AR500 costs less than half as much as the Ti, and is much easier to work (though obviously working will degrade the properties).
The titanium is super really light, however... so the choice of material will depend on how relatively important weight is vs size and how simple your geometry is such that the added difficulty in working with Ti doesn't add problems.
Obviously there are also other grades of Ti too, but I think the comparison generally holds: If you don't care about weight/mass there is a steel selection which will be stronger, cheaper, and easier to form.
If you do care a lot about weight, an aluminum alloy often comes out the winner unless you just don't care much about costs or have fatigue concerns.
If you start comparing Titanium alloys to Steel then the comparison gets even harder. Titanium alloys are in general stronger than steel as well as much lighter and more corrosion resistant.
4340 steel isn't exotic. It's one of the most commonly used grades of steel out there, and it's much cheaper than titanium. There are steels out there with significant stronger yield strengths too. Meanwhile the highest yield strength of any Ti alloy is <1300MPa.
Titanium is still a really great material in certain applications. But it's not magic. You have to use it intelligently in the right application to get a benefit from it.
When you go to both maximum cold (cryo fuel), and you go to maximum (reentry heat) then steel is amazing.
Aluminum would turn to butter on reentry, it would require a massive amount of heat shielding. Titanium alloys would have same issue.
Titanium alloy also become to brittle in deep cryo.
So steel beats everything in this demanding application. Its amazing.
[0] I mean real wrought iron -- the almost 100% elemental stuff -- like the Eiffel tower is made of. This is practically unobtainable today. The "wrought iron" you commonly see for sale nowadays is always mild steel. And "cast iron" is actually very high carbon steel, not iron. Cast iron so high in carbon that it's brittle and cannot be forged or easily welded.
[1] It's a myth that mild steel cannot be hardened. With a proper wetting agent added to the quench, you can harden it significantly.
> "general" or common steel and "common"/"general" titanium
Why would you compare 'trash-quality' steel vs exotic and expensive material like Titanium?
That does not make any sence.
>4340 steel is an ultra-high strength steel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4340_steel
The alloy composition calls for 0.2-0.3% molybdenum and expects accuracy to within a few per mille for ten elements. Moly is considered so important that there are entire towns in the United States established to mine it to secure the military supply chain.
The others mine molybdenum as a byproduct of copper. I guess you could say the Bagdad mine has a company town, but it wasn't made to secure the military supply chain 140 year ago.