Aerospace materials

These standards were developed informally by manufacturers or government groups such as HM Balloon Factory, later to become RAE Farnborough, often with the assistance of university engineering departments.

[5] This first of the nickel-aluminum alloys was discovered after a series of experiments[6] during World War I, deliberately setting out to find a better material for the manufacture of pistons for aircraft engines.

Although not strictly an 'aerospace' innovation, the use of refractory alloys like Stellite and Brightray for the hard-facing of exhaust valves offered huge gains in the reliability of aircraft engines.

The de Havilland Albatross airliner of 1936 had a fuselage of wooden sandwich construction: wafers of birch plywood were spaced apart by a balsa sheet.

As well as being a construction of light weight and high performance, it also avoided the use of aluminum, a strategic material during wartime, and could use the skills of woodworkers, rather than those of specialized aircraft metalworkers.

Radar became small enough to be carried on board aircraft, but the fragile feed horns and reflectors needed to be protected and streamlined from the airstream.

[8] These light weight materials have given way for stronger, more reliable structures, improved production times and increased power-to-weight ratios.

Since their appearance in 1979, Maglite have advertised their use of 6061 aluminum for their torch bodies, one of the first to make a deliberate feature of aerospace materials for a non-performance reason.

After World War II, Hiduminium alloy appeared in bicycle brake components[9] as its maker sought to expand new markets to replace their previous military aircraft.

In the 1990s, both smelters and recyclers of titanium sought new non-military markets after the end of the Cold War, finding them in both bicycle frames and golf clubs.