Where Ti-6Al-4V Titanium Is Used in North American Manufacturing

A titanium or nickel abrasion strip bonded to the leading edge takes sand and rain erosion, and replacing it is a scheduled maintenance task rather than a blade replacement

Root fittings, rib posts and any fastened joint in a carbon spar go titanium: galvanic compatibility with carbon and a coefficient of thermal expansion close enough that a bolted joint does not unload when the structure cold soaks

Machined titanium fittings tie the box to the wing and the keel beam. The interface, not the laminate, is where a center box program spends its engineering hours

A titanium leading edge sheath bonded to the composite blade takes the bird strike and the rain and sand erosion. The hybrid exists because no all-composite leading edge has passed the bird ingestion test

Machined titanium cases are still in production and still the reference against which a composite case is weighed, and metal remains the choice on smaller engines where the weight saving does not pay for the tooling

Porous titanium and titanium-coated PEEK cages are the live competitive threat, on the argument that a roughened titanium surface osseointegrates and a smooth PEEK surface forms a fibrous layer. Titanium-coated and surface-textured PEEK is the incumbent's answer. This is a metal in a polymers report because it is the material the polymer is losing share to

Metal anchors still hold real share in trauma and in revision cases where pullout strength decides the repair. The polymer displacement argument is imaging and revisability, not strength, and where strength wins the metal stays