h a l f b a k e r yBite me.
add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, random
news, help, about, links, report a problem
browse anonymously,
or get an account
and write.
register,
|
|
|
Please log in.
Before you can vote, you need to register.
Please log in or create an account.
|
Instead of replacing car parts like bent fenders, dented doors or a hail-pelted roof, make the outer shell out of memory metal. After driving or being towed to the nearest car wash, the heat would cause the nickel-titanium alloy to resume its earlier shape. Any original car paint would have to be flexible.
Expensive models would be 100% memory metal so that even if totalled, they would get back in shape in minutes.
[link]
|
| |
Car sheetmetal out of Nitinol? Seems to me they would all be "expensive models." |
|
| |
Cars would be all shriveled on cold days. |
|
| |
("Shrivel." We need to use this word more often.) |
|
| |
Paying for the Nitinol wires in my braces has certainly made my wallet shrivel. |
|
| |
If heat does the trick, then manufacture the memory metal panels with flexible heating elements attached to the inner side. After a little fender bender, just push a button to apply power to the heating elements and like magic you have a remake of the movie "Christine". |
|
| |
Saturn makes their fenders and doors out of a flexible plastic for that purpose exactly. They are designed to spring back to their shape after getting hit ( similar to kicking the front of a soda machine ) thus minimizing dents |
|
| |
Most vehicles now use Dual Phase steel, for the main structural parts, which rapidly work hardens in the event of a collision. It is more dent resistant as well.
Dual phase steel is produced by finish rolling steel strip at approx 870C, cooling to 650C, holding for 3 seconds, and then reducing temperature quickly to 200C.
Wouldn't the problem with Nitinol be that it would be very easy to bend or dent, initially? But real fun, all the same. |
|
| |