Bike Forums - Titanium frames and aging

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As far as I know, all the tubing used to manufacture bicycles is aircraft quality. Specifically it starts as stock tubing normally used for hydraulic lines internally in aircraft wings. There are some parts and areas on aircraft that are easy to access and that get regular maintenaince - this isn't one of them. So if anyone is having fatigue issues with their titanium bikes - its a manufacturing issue - either a welding quality issue or a product design issue. The material is sound.

Kona dabbled in titanium bikes for a short period of time. They didn't drop titanium because of fatigue issues - THEY were dropped by their tubing supplier because the orders were to small to be worth dealing with relative to their regular aerospace customers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by woodway (Post 14461675)

Well, kinda. Airplanes are made up of many materials. A 787 is 50% composites, 20% aluminum and 15% titanium. You can bet that Boeing would not be using titanium metal on that airplane is there were any concerns about the metal becoming brittle with age. Read for yourself here:

http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aer...icle_04_2.html

Titanium has been widely used in military and commercial aircraft for many years for it's strength, light weight and resistance to corrosion and fatigue.

The new Boeing and Airbus planes use more composits, but most of what is flying now is aluminum.