Titanium alloys, high strength and low density materials compared to steel, have been popularly used for the golf club heads of drivers and fairway woods. The advantage of titanium alloys is that an oversized club head with a large sweet spot can be realized without increasing the overall weight of the club. So far, great effort has been made to produce an oversized golf club head. However, the larger the club head becomes, the thinner the wall of the club head required. To make the wall even thinner, the development of a new titanium alloy having higher strength and toughness than conventional alloys is necessary. In this study, to develop a new beta-titanium alloy for the golf club heads, optimization of the chemical composition of a Ti-V-Cr-Al alloy system was conducted based on the conventional beta titanium alloy Ti-22V-4Al (DAT51). Chromium, one of the solid solution strengthening elements of the beta phase, was employed to enhance the strength of alloys. Vanadium content was optimized to obtain good ductility and to control age hardening speed. After the solution and aging treatment, one of the designed alloys, Ti-15V-6Cr-4Al, showed an excellent combination of strength and toughness compared with the conventional beta alloy Ti-22V-4Al. Furthermore, the combination of tensile strength and ductility of this alloy was improved by cold working and age-hardening. The performance test of golf club heads fabricated by this developed alloy Ti-15V-6Cr-4Al named DAT55G revealed good durability compared with conventional alloy heads made from Ti-22V-4Al and Ti-15V-3Al-3Cr-3Sn. In Japan, this alloy has been used in commercial production for golf clubs since 2001.
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