Nitinol, trucks, off-road usage (out of MA)

[Pezpunk]

OT
@Pezpunk
Bristow, Va,
man, i remember when Bristow was barely a 2 lane gravel road way out in the country, eh

as do i! I remember when most of Fairfax was farmland too, back in the early 80s.

 

[dhrivnak]

OT



It's not black and white for a lot of use cases. Some folks 100% need a truck, some 0% need a truck. Lots of the in-between cases could get by with an occasional truck rental or thinking a bit outside the box if they wanted to. Hauling a load of plywood in a truck ad would be accompanied by a lot of hard hats and grizzled beards no doubt.


View attachment 359816

Yes this is true, but that is not a load of boy scouts going on some back country roads. Or delivering the materials to a Habitat house under construction. What I am saying is MOST people use their truck as a truck some of the time. I agree it is not all the time or even most of the time. But you would not back that Leaf with a bass boat into the lake in a foot or two of water. You likely would not drive it through a muddy field to get to your cabin in the woods, or up a badly rutted dirt road to a hunting cabin. People will use a truck as a truck.

 

[AudubonB]

...and now that the topic has its own thread.....


...looks like I'm gonna HAFta try to corner the Hf market fer Zr fer Zr.

 

[AudubonB]

Seriously: looking into Hf, I found a link stating that the LEM's booster nozzles were crafted out of an alloy containing ten percent!!!! hafnium. Pretty serious numbers for one of the rarest elements on the planet (and the last stable one discovered - 1923 or so).

 

[Blueplanet]

BTW, there's one possibility re: Musk's titanium comment that occurred to me the other day, and I've not seen anyone bring it up. Obviously, you work with titanium alloys, not pure titanium. And Musk hasn't specified just how much would be used, or in one roles. He's also mentioned that the truck will be really sci-fi. Well, here's one of the most sci-fi things you can do with titanium alloys:

That's nitinol, a nickel-titanium alloy (usually a pretty even mix of the two). It's even more expensive than structural titanium alloys (it has to be manufactured in a vacuum), so you're not going to be making the frame out of it, but body panels out of the stuff, and maybe some key crush structure elements Its ultimate tensile strength (the point at which it breaks) is surprisingly good relative to its density - ~900MPa annealed, at a density of ~6,5g/cc (comparison: UHSS = >1000 MPa @ 7,8g/cc; Ti6Al4V = ~950 MPa (annealed; more tempered) @ 4,43g/cc). Yield strength (the point at which it begins to deform) is of course much lower, 70-140 MPa (mild steel = ~370 MPa; UHSS >= ~700; 6061 O (annealed) alumium = ~55 MPa; 6061 T6 (well tempered) >= 240 MPa) (Tesla currently likely uses some annealed alumium alloy for its body panels).

Imagine the demo at the unveiling. Musk is standing onstage talking about the truck, and suddenly a vehicle comes careening in behind him and smashes into the truck, mangling its bodywork. Then a bunch of people with Boring Company flamethrowers come in and heat the panels until they pop back to normal Bonus points if the paint is heat-tolerant.

(Realistically, of course you'd use hot water rather than fire Imagine that with PPF, though... the heat would heal both the metal and PPF at the same time! )

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Oh yeah I remember learning about magic alloy Nitinol a long time ago back during my college years. If I remember they call it the Memory Alloy. I believe it was invented at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Canada. Would be cool to find a use for it in the Tesla vehicles. --Blueplanet

 

[Blueplanet]

Oh yeah I remember learning about magic alloy Nitinol-55 a long time ago back during my college years. If I remember they call it the Memory Alloy. I believe it was invented at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Canada. Would be cool to find a use for it in the Tesla vehicles.

--Blueplanet