Titanium? (!!!!)

[warhead]

I used to be on the Gearkrieg email list, like six years ago. One idea they bounced around was what if titanium had been discovered prior to the War? The implications would be fascinating to say the least. Jets would become more reliable, aircraft would be stronger, and crazier designs of virtually every vehicle would be more possible. Who's with me? (Btw, DP9 never picked up the idea so its fair game for AE-WW2)

[turtle]

I suspect titanium is already being used. The Buffalo powered armor probably has transparent aluminum for its thingypit glass. Germans probably have titanium or some alloy with extraordinary properties from the crashed UFO they got.

[abbysdad]

Hmm...that's interesting to think about. Even today titanium is not widely available and it requires a lot of juice to process.

What really brought about the need for titanium was the change in standards and aircraft design after the war. Most of the aircraft in WWII flew by virtue of post-buckling strength. Which means the fact that some parts were going to yield in a big way was taken into account and relied on. I didn't realize how scary that idea was until I became a structural and forensic engineer!

My grandpa once told me you could see the skin and some structural members in the planes he was navigator on ripple in flight as the stress went through the structures in waves. And that was before anyone started shooting at them!

Post WWII into Korea and Vietnam, you have the beginning of reliability and probabilistic analysis being put into practice. The formation of engineered risk and the desire from the Pentagon to manage or eliminate it in the expensive machines they're paying to train people to fly. That meant that faiures and yielding of the structure was reduced, but with the increased speeds and payloads you had less room for error. So, fewer failures but they were big ones when they happened.

Given that thought process, you're probably right that with titanium the engineers and airmen of WWII would have taken even more extreme risks in flight and design. Maybe we would see more flying wing designs?

[evernevermore(john)]

Warhead - not to rain on your parade but the best way to describe your little run of ideas is no, yes and maybe (in that order). The jet engines of the era were simple, inefficient and maintenance intensive, and nothing short of a massive tech shift would change that. Its just how they were designed. It wasnt a matter of reliability, for example the Me 262s engines were reliable, just placed in a position to suck up every piece of foreign debris possible, and underpowered for the airframe to boot. Take into account that the engine itself was more sensitive to debris then modern turbofan bypass engines and its just a bad deal either way. That said had they been produced en masse and deployed logically it could have made the bombing of Germany bloody on a scale that only the poor British bombers could imagine.

Aircraft would be stronger, and take even more time and resources to build. If you take any grinding or cutting tool that isnt rated for titanium and try to use them you get a fantastic bright white batch of sparks and a broken or dull tool - its strong but its immensely tough too.

As to building wierd stuff - well the guys who wrote Battletech were right in picking titanium for the basis for a Battlemechs skeleton, once you get over the hurdles of massproducing it and machining it you have access to a vast amount in nature, and it really is fantastically strong - just a royal pain to get from the rock to a finished product.

I can back up abbysdad with what he said about buckling strength as I did spend a long time studying Aerospace engineering before life forced me to go with something else. Most of the major British heavy bombers of the war did things with thier wings that could only be called freaky. The amount of flex that was not only designed for but expected is just jaw dropping. You have to understand that many of the aircraft that flew in WW2 were flown by pilots that new if they mistreated the airplane it could come apart (like the infamous P38 compressibility issue) or would flat out do something that would kill them (like the Me 109s take off behavior, where it could potentially snap over on the right wing and slam into the ground thingypit first). This is the area where a major fighter was designed from scratch in 117 days and went straight into production after the prototype was demonstrated. To put that into perspective, a modern aircraft is more like to see 117 months between concept and production. Bonus points if you can guess the WW2 fighter.

[abbysdad]

John,

I had no idea you were an aero guy. That's cool! Were you aero only or did you do ocean structures too?

The reason I ask is that the one area I could see a great use for titanium at the scale AE uses it at is in underwater power suits. Think of them as "water buffalo".

Best Regards,

Chris

[evernevermore(john)]

Jun 2, 2009 11:00:08 GMT -5 abbysdad said:

John,

I had no idea you were an aero guy. That's cool! Were you aero only or did you do ocean structures too?

The reason I ask is that the one area I could see a great use for titanium at the scale AE uses it at is in underwater power suits. Think of them as "water buffalo".

Best Regards,

Chris

I was forced to withdraw from Saint Louis University due to health issues before I got much actual training, but Ive wanted to be an Aero engineer since 3rd grade so Ive managed to teach myself alot about aerodynamics and foster an interest in the "weird" of designs.

You call them underwater Buffalos, I call them proto-Elementals - from Battletech. I have to agree that the strength of Titanium would make for excellent underwater armor, and a fantastic pressure hull. Maybe we can have a Dagon-esque faction when we hit the Pacific theater and have Marines in water buffaloes fighting fishmen (and cameos from Abe Sapian )