- 18 Sep 10, 19:07#215997
We'll see this in F1 next year perhaps?
Link to the full article.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2 ... m-as-.html
Link to the full article.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2 ... m-as-.html
By smashing an aluminum alloy between two anvils, researchers have created a metal that's as strong as steel but much lighter. If the process can be commercialized, it could yield better components for aircraft and automobiles, as well as metal armor light enough for soldiers to wear in battle.
Aluminum's main advantage is its lightness. But the second-most-abundant metal in Earth's crust is also a weakling: It breaks apart under loads that heavier metals such as steel shoulder easily. For decades, scientists have been looking for a way to manufacture the aluminum equivalent of titanium, a lightweight metal that's stronger than steel, but without titanium's high cost.
In the new study, an international team of materials scientists turned to an emerging metal-processing technique called high-pressure torsion (HPT). Basically, HPT involves clamping a thin disk of metal to a cylindrical anvil and pressing it against another anvil with a force of about 60,000 kilograms per square centimeter, all while turning one anvil slowly. The researchers also kept the processed samples at room temperature for over a month, in a common metallurgical process called natural aging. The deformation under the enormous pressure plus the aging alters the basic structure of metals at the nanoscale—or distances measured in billionths of a meter.
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