Is Aluminum and Iron the only 2 viable materials for making an engine block? Why not steel or titanium?

>tfw no Cromoly engine block

plastic is fine

Pretty sure some engines have used magnesium, particularly air cooled ones.

..I'm thinking in particular of classic Beetles, but I'm sure theyre not alone.

I assume you're trolling, but the fact that lots of high performance engines (at least on bikes) use titanium valves suggests not.

Just imagine a billet of chromoly big enough to mill a V8 or I6 out of.

Holy shit.

>all this piss weak materials

lmao

gizmodo.com/scientists-finally-made-carbyne-a-material-stronger-tha-1770682640

Maybe titanium filled but not coated because it would dissolve

Billet blocks exist
dragzine.com/tech-stories/engine/hardcore-custom-engines-a-look-at-darts-billet-blocks-and-heads/

Note that most engine blocks use castable materials. This is for production purposes. Every engine block has been made for production, and casing is the cheapest option. This leaves easily castable materials as the prime choice (namely, iron, aluminum and magnesium).

Casting steel is a bitch, and doesn't yield much benefit over cast iron. The initial cost for casting and material processing would require you to make a million blocks before it was comparable to the cost of cast steel.

Machining a block would open up the avenue to other materials, if you could even get the billet large enough to machine, and requires technology that wasn't around until the 80's (namely precision CNC equipment), and would end up costing six or seven figures to equate out the labor.

Ti is a bitch to machine, and cost a fuck ton. Doubt we'll ever see a Ti block before we run out of oil.

Yeah, no shit they exist. But most are aluminum because its easy to get big ingots of aluminum for cheap. It's also easy to machine without going through tools like a mofo.

Something like 4140 steel is a different story.

The main problem with steel is how difficult it is to cast. Also, it has bad heat conductivity compared to grey iron. Some engine blocks have been made of steel, but mostly machined from a billet.

Titanium is too expensive for most applications, and also needs to be machined.

God damn you're retarded

*million blocks before it was comparable to the cost of cast iron.

Magnesium will be a thing soon, Honda is doing it on their motorcycle englines.

bitches don't know about my tungsten carbide block

Titanium is used in a lot of applications that need great heat or corrosion resistance; jet engines, exhaust valves, turbos...

You always talk to your betters that way?
You'll find even in jet engines there's planned obsolescence young one. They know they're going to dissolve when they fit them

I'm seriously curious / not sure if I'm being trolled as to whether gas corrodes it.

It does. Titanium is used when weight is more important than longevity which is why valves are filled (FILLED) with titanium when they need very low mass to avoid bouncing

aren't valves filled with sodium?

>Having to deal with 20% shrinkage during sintering and then having to diamond grind all surfaces one thousandth at a time for a block that is brittle and cannot be tapped for studs

Shiggy

Not at the same time as titanium afaik

You beat me to it. Magnesium is super light and has actually been a thing for a while. It is actually used in the BMW N52 (2004-2011). They have the added side effect of being flammable.

You are being trolled.

Valves are sometimes sodium filled, to increase heat transfer to the stem.

I mean, I know you are trolling, but at least try to do it professionally.

magnesium is the best, lets build 90% of the car out of it
what could go wrong

Indeed, I know magnesium blocks are a thing since people will burn old beetle blocks at beach/desert parties and light up the night like the sun.

This is simply not true...

>burn old beetle blocks

And yet those cars and engines are still common as fuck, how?

Daily reminder americans are utterly retarded and the correct word is 'aluminium'

>Titanium: really expensive

The connecting rods for my car are titanium and cost $600. Each. That's $3600 just for the fucking rods for this engine.

>Doubt we'll ever see a Ti block before we run out of oil.
fucking heresy

Because they're still cranking them out like crazy in 3rd world shitholes.

too bad it looks like shit

hitler did one thing right

why isnt an aluminum block with like 1/16th
tempered steel sleeves a thing? lightness of aluminum with the chamber support of hardened steel for superturbonos

>tempered steel
do you even know what that means?

How about a Car made entirely out of Tungsten?

yes it means that the steel was tempered

what is tempering?

In b4 some know it all fag who isn't thinks he's clever by answering

The piston heads in my engine are aluminum. Which kinda sucks in a NA diesel because if my egt gets too high I can melt them... Happens at about 1100°

No we are not, last bug was made in 2003

And kinda heavy. 1 gram of diamond weights like 15 grams

>1 gram of diamond weights like 15 grams

...

>car catches on fire
>first responder thinks it's not made of memes
>sprays it with water
youtube.com/watch?v=TOpsB5n9DZ8
>he learns that water pisses it off

>1 gram of diamonds weighs 15 grams

...

A: titanium is very reactive with other metals and chemicals.
B: it's very brittle and would make for a shit engine block because of the extreme heating/cooling phases the blocks go through
c:It's very expensive.

Lots of race car rims are made of magnesium (OZ being the most famous manufacturer that I remember of) and they don't burn when cut through, hit or when scraping the tarmac at 150km/h without a tire out of a turn.
I remember seeing the picture of an OZ rim out of an LMP2 car that had an accident, basically the brake disc exploded and some shit got jammed between the rim and the brake caliper, scraping the hell out of the rim and splitting it in half along the circumference.
It was heavily coloured from the heat along the crack, but it didn't catch fire, and there was a lot of exposed metal.

I'm no engineer but I suppose they add stuff in the mix to make it not flammable.

are you high?

It's super fucking hard to ignite magnesium. Small particulates of anything combust, see flour, water in hot oil, etc.

You need to get magnesium very hot, and it dissipates heat well, to get it to combust, so you're pretty much limited to tiny shavings or dust. You're not going to ignite a large block of magnesium under any realistic circumstance.

>retarded headlights
>inflated wide body look
>worst spoiler

I think you are high mr.

What engine?

Why not depleted uranium?

magnesium has been a thing since cars existed lol.
it's just expensive. karts have mag hubs and wheels.

Still waiting to see some source, trollbuddy.

>NA diesel
How would you go about getting them high, short of turbocharging?

I think magnesium only combusts in high concentrations of oxygen. It is like titanium; highly resistant to oxidation at normal concentration of oxygen, but when in a high concentration...it simply oxidizes very violently.

Second word? Jews maybe?

but its a sacrifice i'd be willing to make for the hardest metal known to man

RB26 N1 blocks are steel instead of regular cast iron.

But can it melt steel beams?

post a selfie and let's see if you look like shit as well.

why an entire fucking block? just make all wearable parts out of titanium. like cylinders, valve guides, crank bearings ect...

isn't iron and steel the same thing?

no
iron is the base element
steel is an alloy made from iron and carbon and or other material

>steel
fuck loads more expensive than iron with little to no benefits for the application
>titanium
awful thermal conductivity, expensive as fuck, and harder to machine
>magnesium
this is a thing. Mg-Aluminium alloys are used in BMW N5X blocks. Very light with one of the best specific elastic moduli of any metals.
Downside is that Mg is very reactive and will corrode in air and catch fire if ignited. This is not ideal for an engine block. Cylinder liners and an external coating of a different metal must be used. Also more expensive than Al.

Getting them high in temp? Excess fuel, and unburnt fuel. When you see trucks blowing dark smoke that is all unburnt fuel, which raises exhaust temp and done long enough will kill the motor. Turbo charging actually cools down the exhaust and stuff by quite a bit because it means that more fuel can be burnt

steel is made from iron.

usually when they say iron they mean cast or pig iron which have a higher carbon content i think.

steel usually means carbon or stainless steel, among other things, which i think have a lower carbon component.

would low thermal conductivity necessarily be a bad thing for a block? i know that for the water cooling system to work the thermal energy needs to be able to pass through certain interior walls in the block, but with the added strength that titanium provides, couldnt those walls be a lot thinner to allow heat to pass through more quickly?

...

all those retards here, its depressing

topgear.com/car-news/detroit-motor-show/meet-fords-carbon-fibre-ecoboost-engine

Carbon Fibre

Yeah, steel in all it's different types is iron with a specific carbon and alloying metal content. Another factor in steel (and other metals) characteristics is how it's heated and cooled and the environment is which that takes place during or after production.

Even the pic you posted says it has an Aluminum block

Steel is expensive compared to iron and offers no benefits except in specific components, i.e. cylinder walls, bearings. Titanium is several times more expensive, heavier than aluminum, and notoriously difficult to work.

Why not wood?

My brother wants to build a propane V6 engine out of PVC.

>mfw

Man a lot of you guys are fucking morons. This is a pretty basic question and people are rambling off the most nonsensical answers. It makes me wonder if every thread on Veeky Forums is like this but I just don't know enough about the subject matter to call them on their bullshit

Aluminum is easily castable, cheap, and most importantly has good thermal properties. Light, resistant to corrosion, etc....

Steel isn't practical. Iron is ok in some heavier duty applications.

My only complaint with aluminum is that it's a fucking bitch to weld if something breaks. My motorcycle engine has these mounts that are part of the original aluminum cast and you're FUCKED if that thing snaps off

...

>Steel isn't practical
OP seems to grasp this, he asked why

>tumblr filename
>gif that is literally two frames

I'd imagine it's more of an issue because your block temperature will be more inhomogenous. This creates lots thermal stress regions.

Post NSX

A weapon to surpass Metal Gear!!!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_RB_engine
>All RB engines have belt-driven cams and a cast iron block.

this is a misconception.
titanium has better specific values than steel
this means that its strength and modulus per unit weight is better.
titanium is about half as dense. Its young's modulus and yield/ut strengths are less than that of steel.

Therefore an engine block made from titanium would need to have more material to retain the same strength, however it will be marginally lighter.

thermal conductivity is a function of thickness and therefore since the walls of the block would be even thicker, the thermal conductivity issue would be magnified even more.

IIRC the thermal conductivity of titanium is around 5x worse than that of steel.

I'm sure it'd work for a bit before the pistons and cylinder bores would be melted into a single lump.

youtube.com/watch?v=jdW1t8r8qYc

>steel
Low strength to weight ratio when cast, gasoline is corrosive to most alloys, low thermal efficiency for the application. Also, pigfat.

>titanium
Difficult and insanely expensive to cast and machine

You can make engines out of magnesium or at the very least, mag-based alloys (check, rz500)
you can make engines out of titanium (no it does not dissolve on gas)
you can make engines out of any metal, and some engine parts are made of molybdenum on race engines (like con rods)
the question is, how much are you willing to pay for something that makes almost no difference, since its not an extreme application
(Addendum, ceramic is also taking off for engines, due to extremely low wear and light weight. Although if you Fuck up it becomes dust)