Owing to the fact that the subject material of this article is, in itself, fairly unremarkable, we should, perhaps, consider what it is that makes a material advanced. Is it significant that it is of an unusual composition? Perhaps we consider a material to be advanced if it has unusual or desirable properties. Possibly a combination of criteria make a material seem advanced to us. An interpretation which I would like to use, for the purposes of this article at least, and perhaps for other articles to follow is that a material is an advanced one if it offers us new opportunities in design.

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In previous articles on advanced metals, we have looked at a number of materials currently used in motorsport and some which are just starting to be used. In this article, we will look at a material which has, at times, been held up as a ‘wonder-material’ and at other times almost completely neglected when we consider engine design. Despite this it has been widely used in racing engines for structural and reciprocating parts, and is commonly found on many road vehicles. It is Magnesium to which I refer, and in this article we will look at the various applications for which it has been Read more…

In a previous article on the subject of advanced metals, we reported on the properties and uses of aluminium metal matrix composite materials as used in the modern racing engine. As can be seen from the table in that article, metal matrix composites have a lot to offer the designer of racing engines. The obvious areas where we might seek to use stiff lightweight alloys are the parts which we need to accelerate and change direction at high frequency, and the largest and most important of these, is the piston.

Metal matrix composite pistons are not a new concept Read more…

In a recent article in the crankshaft section of the website, I discussed very briefly the methods by which heavy metal counterweighting can be added to crankshafts. Heavy metal is the common term, but a more technically correct description would be dense metal, and these are generally tungsten alloys.

The picture which accompanied the aforementioned article showed additional counterweighting mass in the form of cylinders or slugs of tungsten pressed into place in each counterweight. There are some advantages to this Read more…

The previous article (Pin Critical) on Advanced Metals last month continued on the subject of titanium alloys. This month, we shall look in more detail at some of the more exotic aluminium alloys which are available, following on from a previous article in this vein.

Whilst in some applications, a low modulus material is very useful (fasteners for example can benefit from having a low elastic modulus), in many of the applications where aluminium is used, high stiffness would be a useful benefit to the designer. Most aluminium alloys have a modulus Read more…

The article on Advanced Metals last month looked at some of the titanium alloys currently being used in racing engines, and some of the alloys currently under development. The article mentioned that, despite restrictions on the introduction of new materials in Formula One, the engine manufacturers continue to invest time and resources to investigate materials development. The two main uses for titanium in racing engines currently are con rods and valves, although there have been efforts to replace most components that have traditionally been made in steel.

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The article on Advanced Metals last month looked at some of the aluminium materials which are being used and investigated currently in Formula One. This month we shall begin to look at some of the applications of titanium alloys, again at which materials are currently being used, and what might be over the horizon.

The main applications for titanium in racing engines currently are connecting rods, valves and fasteners. Indeed, there are a number of production engines where titanium is now the material of choice for connecting Read more…

The article on Advanced Metals last month briefly touched on some materials which have been tried and tested in Formula One with varying degrees of success, and in this article we shall look a little deeper at some of the materials currently being used or under investigation, and examine how these differ from the more traditional grades used.

Whilst Formula One is frozen at present in terms of introduction of new materials owing to the homologation

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The field of materials and metallurgy has a big role to play in racing engine design, especially in those categories where the regulations allow emerging materials to be used. Unfortunately Formula One is now very limited in this respect and, before engine development was frozen, people worked hard and spent lots of money to get materials close to the imposed limits, especially the specific modulus rule where a maximum of 40GPa g-1 cm3 applies to metallic materials. There is always a push for increasing specific modulus (stiffness), and there exist numerous materials

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There are several successful applications of Metal Matrix Composite (MMC) materials in Formula One, although their use in engines is currently banned. MMCs have also been used in other forms of motorsport, and are finding an ever-increasing number of interesting applications.

A Metal Matrix Composite can be defined as an engineered material made from at least two substances, at least one of which is a metal, each having substantially different chemical or physical properties, and each of which remain distinct from each other in the end product, as opposed to a compound, in which the materials are chemically combined at the molecular level. Read more…