Do titanium spokes get brittle after a few years like aluminum spokes?
I have some wheels that are a couple of years old and was wondering if the spokes corrode or get brittle?
Thanks
Titanium has the highest fatigue life of commonly used bike materials. Aluminum has the lowest. So they shouldn’t get brittle. Good luck.
Why do you think aluminum gets brittle? I have not experienced this. David K
It is my understanding that corrosion from salt and the elements cause aluminum to get brittle around the nipple threads. I have broken a couple of spokes in my day and most of the time they tell me as spokes get old they can get brittle.
Work-hardening (hard tends toward brittle) happens when a metal bends and takes on permanent set. Aluminum does this pretty quickly.
Corrosives on aluminum form an aluminum oxide layer that is pretty hard, so there’s a microscopic coating of a brittle material on there, but really, it wouldn’t cause failure because you shouldn’t be flexing it to the point of permanent set.
Spokes tend to break at one of two points – the threads and the neck. Threads are essentially a notch, which is a stress riser and beginning of a crack. It happens. It’s not becasue they get brittle, it’s because the design of the spoke puts a stress riser there. Wouldn’t matter if it’s at the rim or the hub, the same thing applies.
Hello Summit and All,
Natural Aging. The more highly alloyed members of the 6xxx wrought series, the copper-containing alloys of the 7xxx group, and all of the 2xxx alloys are almost always solution heat treated and quenched. For some of these alloys, particularly the 2xxx alloys, the precipitation hardening that results from natural aging alone produces useful tempers (T3 and T4 types) that are characterized by high ratios of tensile to yield strength and high fracture toughness and resistance to fatigue. For the alloys that are used in these tempers, the relatively high supersaturation of atoms and vacancies retained by rapid quenching causes rapid formation of GP zones, and strength increases rapidly, attaining nearly maximum stable values in four or five days. Tensile-property specifications for products in T3- and T4-type tempers are based on a nominal natural aging time of four days. In alloys for which T3- or T4-type tempers are standard, the changes that occur in further natural aging are of relatively minor magnitude, and products of these combinations of alloy and temper are regarded as essentially stable after about one week.
In contrast to the relatively stable condition reached in a few days by 2xxx alloys that are used in T3- or T4-type tempers, the 6xxx alloys and to an even greater degree the 7xxx alloys are considerably less stable at room temperature and continue to exhibit significant changes in mechanical properties for many years.
Cheers,
Neal
"I have some wheels that are a couple of years old and was wondering if the spokes corrode or get brittle? "
Unless you have Mavic Kyseriums, or top of the line Fulcrum wheels, it is highly (like pretty close to 100%) unlikely that you have aluminum spokes.
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They are Cane Creek’s built with TI spokes not aluminum.