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Mostly aluminum and a little steel for wing and landing gear trunnions.

Some new aircraft (airbusses and the not yet out Boeing 787) are composite non-metal material like carbon-fiber. These will still have some aluminum and steel for structure.

Even though a material may be identified as "aluminum", this aluminum is a alloy that has other metals added to give it the structural properties required. You can not build anything with pure aluminum. There are many different variations of aluminum alloy. Later alloys are more stronger and have improved fatigue properties.

The same is true with Titanium. The earliest type of titanium alloy was called 6Al-4V Titanium, which means 6% Aluminum and 4% vanadium mixed in with the Ti. More recent alloys is an alloy with mixtures of 10-2-3 mixture of these metals.

Landing gear are made of high-strength steel forgings. Some are made out of high-strength aluminum forgings or titanium forgings.

There have been many other types of materials used in combination for various types of composite structures. The most common composite is E-Glass fibers that are laid out in a mold in layers with epoxy and cured in an oven. Other materials have been tested such as boron.

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13y ago

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