Ford F-150

Times when each of these metals' flammability is an issue. Check the previous threads.

You want actual video of aluminum burning?

The search term "aluminum burns" yields 11,700 results on Yahoo.

The term "burning aluminum" yields 712 results on You Tube.

It's not an issue. You're the one who's cooking up most of the nonsense.

Show us one.

I seem to remember that the first Corvete had a plastic body and nobody talked about fire :-)

And a search for "You Tube aluminum does not burn" yields 2,470,000 results.

I think maybe that Ford salesmen brought it up.

BTW, they put some flame retardents in the resin for Corvettes. Not so the old Lotus Europa, apparently. I watched one burn in the student parking lot at Michigan State. We thought it was a football rally. d8-)

ALL corvettes have plastic bodies - to this day

Today's 'Vettes still burn pretty good too. So do "composte" airplanes.

I don't know if they're still building them this way, but the 1997 Corvette had a balsa-core FRP-laminate floor. Balsa wood burns pretty good, too....

True and I never met a Corvette owner that seemed to be worried aboiut the danger of fire :-)

VW Beetle engines and transmissions were a magnesium alloy that could burn fiercely, but they didn't incite neurotic paranoia, and neither do wooden houses.

Yes, indeed. I designed some equipment for the factory that produces the balsa cores. They also make cores for various fighter plane parts.

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he increased fire factor.

tenacious", but compared to what, I don't know. I imagine the stuff can't be any safer than the steel that was used in car manufacturing back in the

Flammability of Aluminum" turns up 25,300 search results.

there is simply less of a fire safety question with steel. Search engine i nquiries show that.

copper and most other metals are in fact looking safer than aluminum (whic h was the original point).

ach year. Another says there are 183,000 car fires each year. The stats c an go on and on, Ed. They really can. I don't care what *you* drive, perso nally.

evious threads.

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"When a steel truck burns, there is still truck left when the fire burns ou t. On the other hand, if you have ever seen a vehicle with aluminum constru ction burn, it turns into a pool of metal. Aluminum has a much lower meltin g point so the heat of a burning vehicle is intense enough to literally tur n the softer alloy into liquid."

Which fighter?

The last wooden jet fighter I know of was the mid-50's de Havilland Vampire 2-seat night fighter variant.

-jsw

It makes a strong composite. McLaren's 1966 F1 car used balsa-cored aluminum panels. Sailboat decks and roofs are still made of balse-cored FRP. Some of the competing foam cores sag too much in the heat of the sun.

The trick, they tell me, is wetting it with resin without having the end-grain balsa soak it all up, leaving the glass fibers starved for resin. A few applications have solved it by using prepregs.

Were you involved with that issue?

You said aluminum burns. You repeatedly say that it's "flammable." They aren't talking about aluminum burning. They're talking about melting.

Now, here are the takeaways:

If you're in a truck that burns, steel or aluminum, you're dead. Get out.

If an aluminum truck burns in a gasoline fire, it may melt.

If a steel truck burns in a gasoline fire, it's warped and annealed beyond use. This applies to both body panels and to structure. For example, high-strength steel B-pillars, which are used in both steel- and aluminum-bodied vehicles, that are involved in a fire drop from

So the bottom line is this: 1) You can't show an example of aluminum vehicle bodies burning, because they don't burn. 2) A car or truck, steel or aluminum, that is involved in a gasoline/diesel/plastic/fabric fire is totalled. 3) If you're in one while it burns, you're dead either way.

In terms of safety, there is no difference.

Looking at that there was a metal fire. The White puff / fluff spewing out after many explosions. I suspect it was the back of the truck with the tank torching off.

Body's and engine blocks out of Al are not pure Beer can Al. It is to soft. They make alloys. Magnesium is very common to make strong and hard engine blocks (Porsche etc) and I suspect like materials in the truck. Once Magnesium gets hot, and I have had it in my furnace get that hot, it glows extremely hot, melting Stainless Steel easily.

I had to Tong it out of the Furnace and put the vessel into a hole I dug in the ground. Nasty hot fire.

You can see the steel belting wires are still there, tires gone. Rims gone. Truck gone. Pile of junk.

A special class of fire extinguisher is required for metal fire.

Mart> >>> >>>

There is no metal fire. There is no metal there that will burn.

This is aluminum, Martin, not magnesium. There is no more than 2.5% magnesium in the alloys used on Ford trucks. That is not enough to influence burning. I know the specific alloys. The chief metallorugical engineer for the Ford 150 laid them out fully in a conference last week, which I attended. But you'll find they're similar to 5052 and 6061.

The engine block of that truck is made of compacted-graphite iron. The head and crankcase are standard aluminum casting alloys -- something like A356.

The old VW engine blocks were high-mag alloys, for lightness and ease of casting.

There is not enough mag in any of the Ford truck alloys to burn.

Again., there is no metal fire there. Aluminum sheet, plate, and castings will not burn in air. Like steel and iron, they will burn in pure oxygen.

Fine - explain the White fluff soot near the end. One never knows - I put the facts out and you went to a seminar. You have some facts. I didn't say Ford was that way on anything - I Proposed that it could be.

A metal fire is Oxidation. Rapid Oxidation. When the metal is hot and it pulls in high volumes of air in up drafts. Draft furnace.

What was the White - that looks like Mag to me. I've seen it. It wasn't paint. It wasn't plastic - long gone by that time.

Mart> >

Ed Huntress fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Ed, you're obviously an expert on metals as fuels.

So you probably will tell me that I "can't burn" aluminum and aluminum/magnesium alloys in my fireworks, or in air.

But I do it daily. With aluminum. In the most brilliant and spectacular ways you can imagine. I can burn it in powdered form or in puddles of the molten metal. I can burn through steel chasses with it.

If you actually believe you cannot ignite aluminum, you've 1) never tried, and 2) never been a firefighter, and 3) never had any experience with fireworks.

That it takes a different stimulus than Mg/Al alloys > 50% magnesium is entirely beside the point.

If Ford actually told you "it won't burn" instead of your just assuming it, then they are deliberate liars. That, because "the chief metallorugical(sic) engineer... laid them out fully."

You say this was for an article you're writing?

Lloyd

LLoyd