Baseball bat aluminum alloy development

Scandium-aluminum at 0.1% scandium doubles alloy cost but increases strength 10–15%. Boeing can't afford it; baseball bats can. Hundred-thousand-ksi-strength bats. ## Figures referenced (recurring numeric anchors, not cases)

I'll tell you what scandium could be used for. If you could put a tenth of a percent scandium in aluminum alloys, you can increase the aluminum strength by 10 to 15 percent. Boeing would love you. But the problem is, to put a tenth of a percent scandium in aluminum doubles the price of the aluminum. It may only be a tenth of a percent. So we actually use scandium — anybody know where we use scandium in aluminum alloys? Baseball bats. You can get a hundred thousand ksi strength in scandium aluminum baseball bats. Anyway, this is relative cost — lots of metrics for these things.

Scandium-strengthened aluminum bats; 100–105 ksi via fine grain size from extrusion-quench process. Trampoline effect requires thin walls to match ball stiffness. Bats now crack after one good hit at the highest strengths.

Scandium, yttrium, and lanthanum are all interesting for ceramics, for functional materials. In some of the ceramics — like yttrium-stabilized zirconia — it can be a structural material. Scandium does go into metals. If you look at my little chart, scandium is at two thousand tons a year. Anybody know what scandium is used for in alloying? Aluminum, right. Anybody know what the highest strength aluminum alloys are, and they're not used for aerospace? 100 ksi strength. Baseball bats.

Tom introduces a scandium-alloyed baseball bat (TH-T 100) and uses the Soviet origin of scandium grain refinement to set up the broader story of scandium vs. titanium/zirconium in aluminum alloys.

At the end of the day yesterday I'd forgotten to bring my scandium baseball bat. If you look on here there are a number of things. One, it says TH-T 100 scandium alloy. It was really the Soviets who came up with using scandium. We use titanium in some aluminum alloys as a grain refiner — you get titanium nitrides or titanium borides that form as low precipitants and keep the grains from getting large, so you get fine-grained aluminum. But scandium works even better.