All-titanium campus bridge show way for defense industry

been a steady customer ever since.

The titanium market gradually has expanded into commercial aerospace, industrial and consumer products. Titanium is now found in jet engine fan blades, nuclear plant heat exchangers, artificial hips, golf clubs, wedding rings and even American Express’ exclusive Centurion Card. Renowned architect Frank Gehry triggered a flurry of architectural titanium use with his 1997 design of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. The building’s wildly curvaceous exterior is sheathed in the silvery metal. (Gehry’s less extravagant Peter B. Lewis Building on the Case Western Reserve University campus features stainless-steel cladding rather than titanium.)

Midwest in the lead
The Midwest has become a hub of titanium production, with more than 40 companies that process the metal or fabricate parts. Ohio’s annual titanium-related sales are $1.7 billion to $2.5 billion, according to estimates prepared for the defense metals center by economist Jack Kleinhenz. RTI International Metals Inc.’s mill in Niles, near Youngstown, has a 10-year, $900 million agreement to provide titanium parts for Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner passenger jet. “I’ve got a vision that Ohio will be the titanium capital of the United States,” said former U.S. Rep. Ralph Regula, the Navarre congressman whose $2 million earmark in the 2008 defense budget supports the defense metals center in his old district.

Still, titanium’s share of the overall metals market is a tiny fraction of steel’s, and its cost remains high, although proponents stress that its durability means it won’t have to be replaced as often as steel. The titanium sheeting in Gehry’s designs carries a 100-year warranty against corrosion but are likely to last 10 times that long, said Vicki Eudaly, vice president of the supplier, Architectural Titanium LLC. That’s why it often shows up in iconic buildings such as museums.

Where it has not appeared is as a replacement for corrosion-vulnerable steel in big infrastructure projects such as bridges. “I don’t think there’s too much indication that’s going to change short-term,” said CWRU civil-engineering professor Arthur Hucklebridge. While it is no Golden Gate, the University of Akron’s 200-foot-long pedestrian bridge is meant to be a small catalyst for titanium’s future infrastructure use. If it is built, it also will solve an accessibility issue.

Taking the long way around
From their dormitory rooms high in the converted grain silos of the university’s Quaker Square complex, students can see some of their classroom buildings just a football field’s length away. A pair of busy CSX railroad tracks cuts off the dorm from the main campus. Trekking to the viaducts that carry cars over the tracks adds half a mile or more each way to the students’ walking or biking commute. Until the university erected a fence, some braved the train traffic, clambering down a gully and scrambling over the rails.

Under President Luis Porenza, UA is in the midst of a building boom — a $500 million remake of the urban campus that will add or renovate more than 30 facilities. Clark, the defense metals center’s director, knew of the railroad track issue from his tenure as a consultant to Porenza. He raised the idea of a titanium bridge connecting Quaker Square to the evolving campus with architect Ted Curtis, the university’s vice president of capital planning.

“I thought, ‘How perfect,’ ” said Curtis, who had envisioned a pedestrian bridge when he led the transformation of the old Quaker Oats mill and its 36 silos into the Quaker Square complex 30 years ago. “It falls right in with all these exciting new ideas we’re doing. I told Luis, ‘Here’s something that could be really unique and add to the campus.’ He said, ‘Go for it.’”

Clark and Curtis have invited student teams from 60 Midwestern universities with architecture, civil engineering or industrial-design programs to submit designs. The metals center is putting up more than $60,000 in scholarship and prize money for the winners, who’ll be announced next May.

The only design guidelines are that the all-titanium bridge is “practical, feasible and affordable.” The university and the metals center also want something befitting a landmark structure. For inspiration, they point to Gehry’s graceful pedestrian bridge at Chicago’s Millennium Park.

Whether a glistening titanium bridge will someday arch over the rusting steel tracks depends on the university’s and the metals center’s abilities to raise money to cover the construction cost. That could be as much as $5 million, compared with the $1.5 million price tag for a conventional overpass. Clark, who’s already touting the titanium bridge’s benefits with federal and state officials, is optimistic. “We’re going to be obligated and personally totally immersed in getting it built,” he said. “There’s a great deal of enthusiasm.”