Titanium in Automotive Production

Abstract

Although titanium has meanwhile made its way into serial production of automotive parts, its use has been widely limited to niche applications and was not driven by weighing the technical and economic aspects. Cost of semi‐finished titanium products is still limiting; indeed, new and cheaper processes for production of Ti itself are urgently needed. However, if one extrapolates the current status of Ti technology based on the historic development of the knowledge bases on other automotive metals (steel, Al, and Mg), the future of titanium use in cars looks quite bright.

The microstructure and surface hardness of Ti6Al4V alloy implanted with nitrogen ions at an elevated temperature

“…Ti6Al4V alloy is used for example in the aerospace industry, in the automotive industry and in biomedical engineering [4][5][6]. A serious disadvantage of Ti6Al4V alloy is its poor performance in sliding, hardness and wear [7,8].…”

Investigation of laser shock peening effects on residual stress state and fatigue performance of titanium alloys

“…%). The formulation cost of this alloy is lowered by adding Mo and Fe in the form of a ferro-molybdenum master alloy [10,11].…”

Extraction of titanium from different titania precursors by the FFC Cambridge process

“…The FFC * Corresponding author. Cambridge process is therefore considered to be able to significantly reduce titanium's production cost [6][7][8][9] and encourages academic interests [10][11][12] and ongoing pilot demonstration on larger scales in the industry [13]. It promises an economical and environmentally friendly alternative to the Kroll process which uses the toxic chlorine gas and expensive magnesium in the feeding materials, takes about 2 weeks for each batch production, and consumes a significant amount of energy: more than 50 kWh/kg Ti [14].…”