eli5, What is the difference between aluminum and space grade aluminum?

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Is it just marketing or is there an actual structural difference?

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26 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The main difference is the quality of the material and the process methods used to make it. Aerospace grade has less impurities meaning that it has better mechanical properties, mostly under fatigue loading or other dynamic load conditions. For some materials there are other property benefits as well, but that is it in a nut shell.

Edit: aluminium can have many grades eg 2014, 2024, 6061, 7050 etc, and each one can have different specifications to different international standards depending on their designed use. These are commonly BS Lxxx (British standard) or AMS xxx (aerospace materials standard). Where xxx are the identifying numbers of the specific standard eg AMS7050 or BS L167

Most of the time it is just used as a marketing ploy in non aerospace items. Though it does show that the materials used in production are of a specific standard, rather than any old rubbish. For static household objects, it’s really not a big deal. For things like downhill mountain bikes, then it can actually help.

Hope that’s useful.

Source: I am a metallurgist/materials engineer in the aerospace industry.

Don’t get me started on MIL-SPEC materials 🤣

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