Will carbotitanium (like Pagani Huayra) make it to F1?

[g-force_addict]

Reportedly its both lighter and stronger yet it doesn't shear upon impact as carbon fiber. Although its more expensive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbotanium

So far only Pagani has used it for its Huayra.
Are there any patents preventing widespread use?

[Lycoming]

Combining two difficult-to-work-with materials using a finicky up process definitely sounds like my idea of a good time.

[shelly]

I am not sure if this material used by pagani is really as good as they market it. I remember a post by scarbs being very critical about that, but I am not sure

[krisfx]

Reportedly its both lighter and stronger yet it doesn't shear upon impact as carbon fiber. Although its more expensive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbotanium

So far only Pagani has used it for its Huayra.
Are there any patents preventing widespread use?

They used it on the Zonda too. I didn't think it was as light as pure carbon fibre as you're actually adding a metal to the matrix (I am happy to be proven wrong though). I personally wouldn't specify it, the destruction properties of carbon fibre on things like front wings etc are ideal in F1 and they won't change something if it isn't broken.


Regarding costs, F1 is expensive enough, if this costs more to do exactly the same job, then it'd be laughed at and left well alone. Again I'm happy to be proven wrong.

=]

[piast9]

I think that F1 engineers are aware of this material and if they found it useful they would use it ASAP.

[Jersey Tom]

Titanium strands coated in platinum and then aged (no doubt in fine oak casks) before going into a composite.. I'm sure that's hefty on the wallet.

So basically this is a composite but some carbon fibers are replaced with Ti strands? I dunno, it's interesting I guess.. getting the fibers matched up in terms of elongation and yield would no doubt be a challenge. To be fair that page says the result is a part that is "strong and light" - not necessarily "strongER and lightER."

I guess fundamentally I'm having a hard time seeing how merging the two fibers would make for mechanical properties EXCEEDING either and not just being somewhere between the two. Only thing that could get me really excited is if it had some much better failure mode.

Come to think of it, do carbon and Ti have significantly different CTE's? That would make for some challenges if used in any areas subjected to high heat.

[thepowerofnone]

Ageing is the least of their concerns, its really quite easy to do and is done to pretty much every single non-ferrous alloy on the market. Can't be sure if you brought it up just to get the oak casks joke in but I thought I should clarify for anyone not familiar with what ageing is - it just means you heat it up to about 300 C and hold it there for between 20 and 100 hours, allowing certain metastable phases to form in the metal. Lots of benefits, very few disadvantages.

It is generally the case that a composite shares a volume fraction of the properties of its components - eg CFRP is fundamentally a volume fraction of its components: the matrix epoxy and carbon fibres. However, there are cases in which you can improve the properties past either of the maximums of the constituents: the best example of this is a material called GLARE, which is a carbon fibre and aluminium composite where the material massively gains improvements to its abilities to resist cyclic failure; another very good example is CFRP, which has a toughness (resistance to cracking) 10 times larger than the epoxy and 50-100 times larger than the carbon fibres. My point is, it can be done, depending on what you are looking to gain. This is what they are on about when they say that it will shear less, but since F1 uses deformable crash structures which are designed to disintegrate, the Ti could cause big problems here, its less likely to fragment, more likely to just deform which is not really ideal.

Yes, different CTEs is a big problem - GLARE has really big problems with temperature sensitivity, despite being virtually fireproof, operating outside of a narrow temperature band causes it to warp. Then again, if you know what that temperature band is going to be there are ways to just preload your material so that at that temperature there are no build in stresses.

[flyboy2160]

The patent reads as though it was intended to allow the use of Titanium variants with mechanical properties closer to that of Gr/polymer composites instead of having a mechanical properties mismatch at the metal-composite junction. The patent mentions GLARE and ARALL type structures (metal skins with composite laminate cores), but not treated threads embedded in a laminate.

If I recall correctly, these sandwiches were developed to improve fatigue life of the metal parts of the sandwich while allowing the use of regular metal attachment expanding fasteners (e.g rivets), instead of special close fit composite fasteners. They are not the panacea claimed by its proponents-they have their own problems. They never really caught on in a big way in replacing monolithic gr/polymer laminates.

I'm with JT, this will be expensive even for F1. The initial Ti etch bond prep is time sensitive: the Ti primed part must either be bonded to the composite within a certain time in free air or preserved in an inert gas container. This is a total PITA. I can't imagine going through it twice with two bond preps.

But that is a moot point: the Ti version of ARAL makes no sense for F1. They are doing fine with what they have.

I also don't see the point of using the treated fiber version claimed to be used by Pagoni in F1. What advantages do you get? Ok, Ti has a higher strain to failure so maybe the structure wouldn't shatter as badly.* Has Pagoni ever published on this? I couldn't find anything with a quick search.

( *but the teams are already required to do this and achieve it, in some areas, with that funky looking large square fiber pattern material. )

here's a nice summary of the non-Ti materials: http://bulletin.incas.ro/files/ion_dinca_v2no2_full.pdf

no sale for me.

[aussiegman]

The US Patent number is: US 5733390 A and listed as Carbon-titanium composite files in 1995 and published in 31 March 1998.

Patent is owned by SALZBURG TRADING CORPORATION
Parent listed inventor was William R KINGSTON

[thisisatest]

sometimes ti mesh is laid into carbon fiber to help it resist clamping forces, pinch forces, etc.. in the bike industry, Syntace and RaceFace have used that. others have used synthetic fibers. now there are resin additives that can increase the toughness of carbon. first is was "simply" rubber in the resin, but that lowered shear strength between plies. now it's some nano-miracle-stuff.
http://www.cervelo.com/en/engineering/t ... ystem.html
later it could be graphene, which may be the do-all like baking soda is for random household uses.
there are also ways to coat carbon with a structural metal, giving it a super-strong outer shell so the carbon can get on doing its job.
http://www.cervelo.com/en/engineering/t ... ovate.html
so it's possible that carbotanium has been superseded, except in aesthetics.

obviously im a bike guy...

[riff_raff]

Reportedly its both lighter and stronger yet it doesn't shear upon impact as carbon fiber. Although its more expensive.

I fail to see how a few strands of Ti woven into a carbon fabric will make the ply lighter, stronger or more resistant to shear failure. Carbon/epoxy laminates commonly fail from interlaminar shear, but adding Ti fibers to the plies would not help in this regard. However, there can be some benefit to adding titanium reinforcements and rivets/hi-locks at critical locations in a bonded composite structure joint to prevent propagation of adhesive peel failures. Interlaminar shear can also be reduced by 3D stitching of ply stacks.

[thepowerofnone]

Reportedly its both lighter and stronger yet it doesn't shear upon impact as carbon fiber. Although its more expensive.

I fail to see how a few strands of Ti woven into a carbon fabric will make the ply lighter, stronger or more resistant to shear failure. Carbon/epoxy laminates commonly fail from interlaminar shear, but adding Ti fibers to the plies would not help in this regard. However, there can be some benefit to adding titanium reinforcements and rivets/hi-locks at critical locations in a bonded composite structure joint to prevent propagation of adhesive peel failures. Interlaminar shear can also be reduced by 3D stitching of ply stacks.

I'm sorry but just because you fail to see how it can help doesn't mean it can't help. Unless you are a materials scientist, the guys who designed this material probably know more about this than you. Rivets and reinforcements always generate stress concentrations which are not often desirable. Yes, you are absolutely correct that interlaminar shear can be reduced by your weave, but that doesn't mean that that is the only way. If I had to guess I would say that the titanium fibres help because their high ductility reduces the propagation of cracks because the energy required to pull them out of the crack is actually higher than carbon fibres - they might not have a higher UTS but the additional area under the graph makes it tougher. But that's just my guess. However I doubt they would make that claim without quantitive data to back themselves up.

[Lycoming]

I don't think the patent holders ever claimed that it was lightER and strongER, just that it was light and strong. At least, that was my impression from skimming the patent. I certainly don't see how a simple mechanical combination of two materials will result in one that is lighter than both the constituents, at least not in terms of actual density.

[Powerslide]

only thing i know off is that pagani said his carbon titanium mix would be a lot safer in an event of an eccident

[Paul]

I find is strange, because deformation zones in F1 cars are made from carbon fibre with no additives, as far as I know. And considering the stringent tests they have to withstand, that seems to be the optimum solution. Carbon fibre effectively turns to dust on impact, dissipating maximum possible energy. Reinforcing that with titanium or otherwise might defeat the purpose...