Titanium
Named for the Titans of Greek mythology, titanium facilitates our society’s mobility whether through artificial joints or through use in airplanes and spacecraft.
Credit: iStock
This generation of American seniors is living longer, and unlike earlier generations, opting to lead a more active lifestyle. Where seniors formerly had to contend with painful joints and limited mobility due to worn out connective tissue, many Baby Boomers elect joint replacement surgery to continue to hike, dance, and even simply sit on the floor with their grandchildren.
A metal, titanium makes this possible. A material of choice for reconstructed joints, titanium offers many attractive features. It is nontoxic, not magnetic, strong, lightweight, and can form a direct structural and functional connection with the surrounding bone without requiring soft tissue such as cartilage, ligaments, or scar tissue.
Titanium also alloys well with aluminum. It is 60 percent more dense that aluminum and twice as strong; together they create a material that is especially useful in building aircraft and spacecraft where strength and weight reduction are critical. In race cars and motorcycles titanium forms the basis of the vehicle’s structure and is used in engines for its strength, fatigue resistance, crack resistance, and ability to withstand moderate temperatures.
Excellent corrosion resistance also makes titanium desirable for marine applications such as propeller shafts, divers’ knives, and heat exchangers for desalination plants all of which are constantly exposed to salt water.
Titanium’s combination of light weight and strength also make it useful for a wide diversity of applications, including: graphite composites for tennis rackets and golf clubs; lanterns, cookware and eating utensils for backpackers; hypoallergenic jewelry; and exterior cladding for buildings such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.
For more information, visit http://www.berkeleypoint.com/learning/titanium.html