Search Results

Automotive industry is looking to have breakthrough for utilization of titanium in vehicles with cost effective solution. This is due to the relative cost factor and for titanium it is 20 and 2.9 times greater than steel and aluminium respectively. Looking at Today’s scenario of multi material vehicle, it weighs approximately 221 kg on usage of conventional materials i.e. aluminium 37%, steel 42% and composites 21%. also Indian government has taken bold decision to meet BS VI norms directly by 2020 and to achieve the same it is required to meet NOx level of 0.06 g/km for gasoline vehicles and 0.080 g/km for diesel vehicle along with EGR rates of 35% at full load at which conventional materials like steel, aluminium has to withstand for high temperature cycles and high compressed air pressure at outlet.

India is blessed with considerable quantity of titanium based mineral resources accounting to about 20% of the world's availability holding and third largest reserves. The main titanium minerals are ilmenite and rutile available in beach sand deposits in the coastal states like Kerala with production of about 0.6 MT by mining & mineral separation process to provide environmental friendly titanium alloys. Though the major usage of titanium alloys are for aeronautics, defense, space, atomic energy sectors, its usefulness with special properties is yet to be exploited for the Indian automotive sectors. The principle advantages of Titanium alloys for automotive application that can be exploited are - 45% lighter than steel, virtually total resistant to acidic attack, four times more corrosion resistance than stainless steel, high specific strength, good ductility and ease to form by forging and machining operations.