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is Titanium in knives actually real titanium?
- Thread starter dsandiego
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jdm61
itinerant metal pounder
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Sez who? Titanium was not widely used in aircraft until the time of the F-14 and F-15 IIRC. The F-16 was still made primarily from aluminum in order to save money.
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I'm willfully ignorant of most stealth tech. I did work for a defense contractor for a while as a wing top repair/tank rat. We worked on the B-2 and the skin was poly graphite. We had to be taught how to repair it differently than the aluminum wings we were originally trained on. I know the internals were very different than all the other military birds as well, except air force one. What they were made of we were not told.
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For the skins and much of the structure, you can use composite or aluminum. For the structure around the engine, you cannot. If you use 2219, you can use aluminum up to about 500F. The engines are hotter than 500F. So, you have to use something else. If you don't have Ti, you use CRES or Nickel alloy. By the 80's, Ti was available for the 117. Which is not to say that there was not Inco and CRES as well.
If I remember correctly the F-14 used large pieces of Titanium for the wing pivot points. My brother worked on the B-one bomber, lots of Titanium in that structure. I read a article last year about how the price of Titanium rises and falls depending on the requirements of fighter aircraft production. With the current F-22 and the soon to be online F-35 production (not to mention Russia, the EU, and China upgrading their fighter fleets) I'd expect Ti prices to head north.
jdm61
itinerant metal pounder
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The F-22 and F-35 actually have a lot more composite content than say an F-14 or F-15. The F-14 used boron composites for the rudders and a few other things, but it used a LOT of titanium. I I said before, the F-16 used the more traditional aluminum alloys because it was supposed to be a low cost light fighter that could be sold worldwide. It was designed more as a replacement for planes like the A-4 as opposed to the F-4. It was kind a of fast, light concept with as much in common as far as simplicity with the A-10 as with the big fighters. It got more complicated fairly quickly, but really the only high zoot features that the F-16 had from the start was that it was one of the first planes to have "fly by wire" controls and it had the laid back couch style seat that allowed for higher G maneuvers.. The 14 and 15 were really the high priced "starships' of their day.