page_title: Aerospace materials
section_title: Marketing outside aerospace
hierarchical_section_title: Aerospace materials / Marketing outside aerospace
caption_attribution_description: carbon fiber money clip
context_page_description: Aerospace materials are materials, frequently metal alloys, that have either been developed for, or have come to prominence through, their use for aerospace purposes.
  These uses often require exceptional performance, strength or heat resistance, even at the cost of considerable expense in their production or machining. Others are chosen for their long-term reliability in this safety-conscious field, particularly for their resistance to fatigue.
  The field of materials engineering is an important one within aerospace engineering. Its practice is defined by the international standards bodies who maintain standards for the materials and processes involved. Engineers in this field may often have studied for degrees or post-graduate qualifications in it as a speciality.
context_section_description: The term "aerospace grade" has come to be a fashionable marketing slogan for luxury goods, particularly for cars and sporting goods. Bicycles, golf clubs, sailing yachts and even torches are all sold on the basis of their high-performance materials, whether these are relevant or not. Since their appearance in 1979, Maglite have advertised their use of 6061 aluminium for their torch bodies, one of the first to make a deliberate feature of aerospace materials for a non-performance reason.
  Some sporting uses have been for the material's actual qualities. Many ski makers have produced skis wholly from cloth and resin composite materials, using the tailorability of such construction to vary the stiffness, damping and torsional stiffness of a ski along its length. Hexcel, a manufacturer of aluminium honeycomb sheet, became well known for its branded skis, using this same advanced material.
  Sporting uses may be every bit as demanding as aerospace needs. Particularly in cycling, materials may be loaded more highly than in aerospace use, the risk of possible failure being seen as more acceptable than for aircraft.
  Many uses of aerospace materials for sporting goods have been as the result of a 'peace dividend'. After World War II, Hiduminium alloy appeared in bicycle brake components as its maker sought to expand new markets to replace their previous military aircraft. In the 1990s, both smelters and recyclers of titanium sought new non-military markets after the end of the Cold War, finding them in both bicycle frames and golf clubs.
  Carbon fibre composite, and its distinctive weave pattern, has become a popular decorative choice on cars and motorbikes, even in purely decorative contexts such as dashboards. This has extended to the use of flexible stick-on patterned vinyl to skeuomorphically reproduce the appearance, without any of the physical properties.
caption: Carbon fibre money clip
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