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FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

nytimes.com

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Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#111

Post by dbuder »

ajross wrote: post #107
nickff wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also possible that they're using an alloy which is not easily detected, or that the titanium is in a part which was painted or otherwise coated before receipt by Spirit

> an alloy which is not easily detected Seems implausible. Again, Ti is way out on the edge of properties, being intermediate between steel and aluminum in weight and stiffer than either. That alloy would be a pretty novel thing, and novel metallurgy is more expensive than the hot Titanium someone stole from a bomber graveyard in Siberia.

Asif they don't have a handheld XRF to check everything that comes off the truck, the concern is the quality.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#112

Post by hehdhdjehehegwv »

It’s hard not to think this is just the FAA trying to protect Boeing again by making it look like Airbus is equally bad.

FAA should just be rehoused under department of commerce where the job is actually to promote and protect American business interests.

At least then we can admit we have no regulatory oversight of aviation safety. Let’s be honest as a country for once.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#113

Post by Jtsummers »

hehdhdjehehegwv wrote: post #112

It’s hard not to think this is just the FAA trying to protect Boeing again by making it look like Airbus is equally bad. FAA should just be rehoused under department of commerce where the job is actually to promote and protect American business interests. At least then we can admit we have no regulatory oversight of aviation safety. Let’s be honest as a country for once.

The false provenance was discovered by an Italian company, and then Spirit did their own investigation and found they had titanium from the same supplier with the same issue of false provenance. Spirit notified both Boeing and Airbus. Spirit produces parts for both Boeing and Airbus. This isn't about the FAA helping Boeing cover their asses, this is a real issue that impacts both Boeing and Airbus since the titanium ended up in planes from both companies.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#114

Post by Lio »

ajross wrote: post #107
nickff wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also possible that they're using an alloy which is not easily detected, or that the titanium is in a part which was painted or otherwise coated before receipt by Spirit

> an alloy which is not easily detected Seems implausible. Again, Ti is way out on the edge of properties, being intermediate between steel and aluminum in weight and stiffer than either. That alloy would be a pretty novel thing, and novel metallurgy is more expensive than the hot Titanium someone stole from a bomber graveyard in Siberia.

Sorry but I don't think it's implausible at all.

Outside of medical usage I think most commercial use of "titanium" is actually titanium alloys.

I'm sure I read somewhere there's over 50 commercial grades so substituting one for another close but cheaper grade with forged paperwork is very plausible.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#115

Post by magicalhippo »

NASA had issues with falsified tests of aluminium not long ago[1], reportedly costing them $700 million in losses[2].

Though buying from a relatively little known Chinese vendor without thorough testing on your own seems a bit reckless.

[1]: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/aluminum-extrusion-manufactur...

[2]: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nasa-metals-fraud-201...

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#116

Post by dr_orpheus »

albrewer wrote: post #69
jordanb wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Improper alloying, improper heat treating, improper rolling/forming. Trying to back out what you actually have (if you don't trust the supply chain) can be expensive metallurgical analysis involving destructive testing, spectrometers, and electron microscopes. The real way industry solves this problem is mill test reports produced by the suppliers and careful documentation of chain-of-custody. Unless you don't care,…

> expensive metallurgical analysis involving destructive testing, spectrometers, and electron microscopes I used to work in a pressure vessel fabrication shop (for customers like Shell and Exxon). We had a few handheld mass spectrometers for exactly this purpose. Destructive testing was achieved with what we called a "coupon", a piece of metal that ostensibly went through every treatment the base part did. The coupon…

The article mentions that the CoC may have been falsified, but I also wonder if part of this is they had falsified coupon testing/inspection documentation (or likely pulled a "good" coupon test and said it was for that batch). They definitely did not test any coupons after receipt though since the testing by Spirit after the fact confirmed that "the material passed some of the materials testing performed on it but failed others"

I cannot imagine (I say hopefully) that there is not some level of testing here, but I wonder if they were relying on supplier testing and the authenticity of that. But in that case I would also assume that there would be some source inspection of the supplier. These might all be bad assumptions, unfortunately, but this is coming from my experience working in aerospace on the space side of things.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#117

Post by CPLX »

ajross wrote: post #101

The headline is spun. The text of the article doesn't allege "counterfeit titanium", only that the paperwork chain contains (according I guess to an audit done internally at Spirit) counterfeit documents . What that says about the metal itself is unknown. It seems more likely to me to be legitimate but stolen titanium than it does to be fake material. It's not really feasible to fake something like a raw metal. Nothi…

The reason they found it is because it had suspicious physical properties.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#118

Post by samatman »

ajross wrote: post #101

The headline is spun. The text of the article doesn't allege "counterfeit titanium", only that the paperwork chain contains (according I guess to an audit done internally at Spirit) counterfeit documents . What that says about the metal itself is unknown. It seems more likely to me to be legitimate but stolen titanium than it does to be fake material. It's not really feasible to fake something like a raw metal. Nothi…

Yes, this is clearly the case. The phrase "counterfeit titanium" doesn't even make sense, because something counterfeit has the wrong provenance, and the provenance of an alloy or element isn't a meaningful property. You could say "counterfeit Krugerrands", but "counterfeit gold" doesn't make sense.

Now, it could be ersatz titanium, except that the article specifically says that it isn't:

> Spirit added that “more than 1,000 tests have been completed to confirm the mechanical and metallurgical properties of the affected material to ensure continued airworthiness.”

and

> Boeing said in an emailed statement: "This industry-wide issue affects some shipments of titanium received by a limited set of suppliers, and tests performed to date have indicated that the correct titanium alloy was used."

I agree with a sibling comment that this is probably about evading sanctions on Russian titanium, which is produced in such quantity that the US obtained it through intermediaries to build the SR-71 Blackbird.

It's also possible that these are counterfeit titanium parts, as in, real titanium, but not from the source that the documents claim. The article doesn't make that clear one way or the other.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#119

Post by hinkley »

Animats wrote: post #109
mk_stjames wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you hear 'Titanium' mentioned in an engineering sense, rarely is this a reference to elemental titanium alone; structures use alloys of titanium which means small percentages of other metals are added (aluminum and vanadium for example are the two principle alloying metals in Grade 5 titanium, 6AL4V, probably the most common in aerosapce applications), and then the wrought products are even further processed thr…

Titanium is metallurgy on hard mode.[1] Iron and steel behave in a much more consistent way. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09215...

This year I learned titanium shavings are at least as dangerous as magnesium shavings.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#120

Post by dr_orpheus »

JSDevOps wrote: post #3

How the fuck do you counterfeit titanium it’s one of those things that is either or it’s not.

Treatment, alloyed metals along with it, grain structure, manufacturing process.

If you want an easily accessible intro to how metal treatment affects it's material properties go watch Forged in Fire. It is a blacksmithing game show where they make knives/swords but they go in to some of the reasons on why heating/cooling/forging metal in different ways can affect the structure of the metal and the strength of it with the exact same materials.

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