Talk:Duralumin
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If 1908 is correct, the Wright brothers' engine must have been an earlier alloy. A book said that there was only one alloy available in 1903 but did not name it. I was assuming that it was duraluminum. It said that one large aluminum alloy casting made up most of the engine. Perhaps it doesn't take a very good alloy to be better than cast iron when heat conductivity and weight are both important. The engine Manly finished for Langley had much better power to weight (to try to compensate for poorer aerodynamics), but I have not read what the materials were.
As I remember, the name comes from the location of its discovery, which was Düren Germany, but I have not been able to check that on the Web. If anyone else has read that too we should put it in.
- From the beginning this article has not been clear in seperating duralumium, a specific, patented alloy, from a lot of other aluminium alloys. Many others don't use copper as the primary alloying element, or don't respond to precipitation heat treatment - the discovery that made duraluminum useful. Meggar 05:17, 2005 September 11 (UTC)
About the origin of the material's name, a page in German Wikipedia mentions that the name came from Latin word "durus" (hard). This is the link of the page: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duralumin
The article also states that the name is obsolete, but it's still in use, as in the case of the Samsung Series 9 laptop (released Mar. 2011).
which war ?
"Its composition and heat treatment were a wartime secret. "
Which war ? This sentence comes after the story about the Hindenburg. But it says the product use spread through the aircraft industry in 1930's. Was it a secret in WW1 or 2 ?Eregli bob (talk) 11:24, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
- Neither. It was a commercial secret before WW1 (which implied treatment as a state military secret), but it had already become known outside Germany before the outbreak of WW1. The alloy can be determined by inspection and the heat treatment is pretty simple - age-hardening behaviour (unlike Hiduminium) is just something that will happen automatically, once you happen across the right alloy. Yet during WW1 it was little used by the Allies. Again, it was handed over as part of post-WW1 reparations, along with some airships, and yet it was still little used by the Allies. The odd part isn't that Duralumin was unknown or unused, but that aluminium alloys just weren't used (outside airships) for the sort of rolled strip applications for which Duralumin was useful. When it was eventually used like this, Duralumin was known and used. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:07, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
