Properties of titanium and its alloys

It wasn't until 1790 that the element titanium (Ti in the periodic table) was discovered by the English monk Gregor. However, its metallurgical extraction was extremely difficult, and it was not until the 1940s that industrially exploitable solutions were established. The widespread use of the Kroll method for extracting pure Ti enabled the titanium industry to get off the ground around 1950.

The properties of titanium and its alloys can be broadly divided into two classes:

• that conditioned by the nature of its surface: corrosion resistance is excellent and, combined with good processing flexibility, is increasingly used in the chemical industry in particular;

• mechanical properties, which are high and comparable to those of steels; lower density, on the other hand, makes titanium alloys the material of choice, particularly in the aerospace industry.

It is these two classes that will lead to the applications presented in paragraph 5.