Titanium Sheet Developed by Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal is Now Adopted to Fuel Tank on Honda CRF450R Motocrosser

Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation, which is Japan’s largest steel manufacturer, has announced that titanium sheets they developed has been chosen as the material of the fuel tank of the latest model of Honda CRF450R Motocrosser.

CRF450R is Honda’s major motocrosser produced in large quantities and known to be loaded with various up-to-date technologies. However, this application of titanium to the fuel tank itself is the first achievement in the motorcycle industry in the world.

“Go with Lighter Materials “Taking a New Step for Saving Weight of Off-road Models

Many different kinds of materials have been used and replaced by another for motorcycles. Aftermarket parts manufacturers have been using titanium as a lighter material, but it is high in cost, obviously. It is a challenge to introduce titanium to stock parts since the prices will be reflected by the body price.

Now we can say that we took one step further to reduce the weight of off-road models because “tank”, which is known to be complicatedly-shaped and has limited aftermarket parts available, is now made of titanium!

From Press release

Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation in cooperation with Honda had a technical proposal for issues regarding materials processing such as press formability, weldability, and anisotropic. As a result, the quality of TR270C JIS-1 pure titanium, which Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation developed, is acknowledged for its quality and has recently been decided to be adopted to the fuel tank for Honda’s motorcycles.

It is contributed to the further reduction of the weight compared to the resin, the conventional material of tanks, by using its high ratio of the specific strength.

Titanium is light-weighted, durable, and has corrosion resistance. We recently contributed to reduce the weight of main materials of the fuel tanks by taking advantage of its characteristics.

Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation will keep expanding the application of titanium in the automobile field.

(*) anisotropic: exhibiting properties with different values when measured in different directions (in this context: sheet longitudinal direction, sheet width direction, and sheet thickness direction)

→Read the full article

Original Source [ Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation ](*Japanese)