New Steel Alloy Stronger Than Titanium

That was a cool article, thanks. I found a cool video (bottom of the page on this link) that shows a carbon fiber shaft being tested to failure and a steel shaft being tested to failure. Really interesting, the carbon fiber shaft can take about 3 times the torque as the steel shaft and is much lighter.

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/heres-how-much-stronger-carbon-fiber-is-compared-to-st-1521751435

How much torque titanium could take...I don't know.

Found this tidbit in the replies...

..."the best carbon fiber has a tensile strength of under 6,500MPa, which you can compare against Titanium at ~1,000MPa (similar to spider silk). Where does Graphene sit? At about 130,000MPa."...

Graphene is truly the "Holy Grail"....

I wonder what the upper temperature limit for carbon fiber is? Can it be in steam? Could someone make turbine blading out of this? Who knows? Obviously it would have to be in some gaseous (or liquid or super-critical fluid) medium that will not support the combustion of the carbon fiber.

Car thief heaven!

13% less dense than steel is good but compared to 45% less dense for titanium, there is still a long way to go. I have come across corrugated sheet building materials that claim a better corrosion resistance than galvanized steel. That claim would appear to be at odds with this alloy. Corrosion will be a big factor, unless they can crack it this alloy is interesting from a scientific standpoint but not commercial. My experience is that titanium is not as difficult to work with as it's reputation would suggest. Titanium is the worlds fourth most abundant metal and is currently used for a fraction of the applications where it's properties would be valued. If titanium can be refined and marketed at a only 25% lower cost than now, equal strength, and therefore lighter weight titanium components would compete directly with steel.

Very good points. As you noted, the issue with titanium is extracting it. If a cheaper extraction process could be developed, titanium would be a no brainer.

http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/ferro-titanium/

The Kroll Process has been around a long time. All of the re-processing of the initial production of titanium sponge adds a tremendously high cost-factor that makes titanium about 6 times the cost of stainless steels. Link below is for the FFC electrochemical reduction in molten salt that avoids the sponge Ti production. There are still issues with the FFC process that need to be worked out, most of which have to do with undesirable anode reactions, or with unstable "inert" anodes of high density SnO2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFC_Cambridge_process

The Japanese were interested in a new Magnesium energy economy (search Japan Institute of Technology research on magnesium production, or HELIOS laser). If a laser can produce separation of magnesium and oxygen, there is surely a similar potential to directly product titanium from rutile using the same very high temperature. I suspect this would avoid a lot of the undesirable side processes in present titanium production. Here it is: somebody with the youth and energy to make this happen go forth and prosper!

It would be interesting to understand the impact on modulus (stiffness) and corrosion of the alloy when mixing the aluminum with steel, even on a nano level. With aluminum having a modulus 1/3 of steel, the bulk modulus should go down, which would impact the application in stiffness driven structures.

And normally, steel + aluminum = battery, so the corrosion resistance of the alloy would be interesting. It may be that with no "electrolyte" available between the nano particles of the aluminum in the steel matrix, there isn't an issue.