Despite the current high strength steel sheet, aluminum, magnesium material, metal matrix composite and plastic resin materials has played a very important role in reducing vehicle weight, 60% of the combustion energy of automobile fuel is consumed by its own weight. However, the emergence of titanium materials for the industry makes the automobile manufacture to have a better choice. Multi piece type titanium alloy wheels with two and three piece, several parts of the hub were used forging and spinning process of manufacture, and then use titanium bolt to connect, these products have light quality, high strength, superior performance and other advantages, but the price is expensive, so it's currently mainly used for all kinds of Championship Racing and luxury cars.
Reducing the cost is the main research directions of titanium alloy for automobile industry. For the characteristics of the cost distribution of titanium alloy for the automotive industry, at present, material development workers mainly decide to achieve the purpose of reducing costs from the following two aspects, which are developing new type low cost alloy system and the new processing technology. The processing cost of titanium alloy materials accounts for over 60% of the total cost in the production process. How to reduce the processing cost of the titanium alloy has become the focus direction of research. This study is divided into two aspects: one is the improvement of traditional casting and forging process, the other one is the application of powder metallurgy forming technology.
If the automobile can adopt the titanium material, which can greatly reduce the weight of the body, titanium metal has the advantages of small density, high strength and corrosion resistance. What's more, it can reduce the fuel consumption, improve the working efficiency of engine, improve the environment and reduce noise. But the price is so expensive, so it can just have some application in the luxury car and sports car among the automobile industry and it's rarely used in the ordinary car. Therefore, the research and development of the low cost titanium alloy is the key of promoting its application in the ordinary household car. In the development of new type forging technology, the cold forging method is one of the most hopeful methods for the automobile parts of titanium alloy manufacture.