Tungsten Alloy Sailboats Counterweights

What is tungsten alloy ballast for sailboats?

Ballast is used in sailboats to provide moment to resist the lateral forces on the sail. Insufficiently ballasted boats will tend to tip, or heel, excessively in high winds. Too much heel may result in the boat capsizing. When sailing vessels carried cargo, it was at times necessary to sail to a port with no cargo. In order to do this enough ballast of little or no value would be loaded to keep the vessel upright. Tungsten heavy alloy counterweights would then be discarded when the cargo was loaded.
(You can get more information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_ballast.)

As we know, on larger modern vessels, the keel is made of or filled with a high density material, such as lead. However, lead is not environmental-friendly, so owning to high density and non-toxic, tungsten heavy alloy is increasingly adopted in counterweighs for sailboat. By placing the weight as low as possible (often in a large bulb at the bottom of the keel) the maximum righting moment can be extracted from the given mass. Traditional forms of ballast carried inside the hull were stones or sand.

Special properties for tungsten alloy weights
Here are some main advantages of tungsten heavy alloy counterweights::
- High density up to 18.5 g/cm3.
- Up to 65% denser than Lead.
- Up to 130% denser than Steel.
- Mechanical properties to suit either dynamic or static locations.
- Weakly Ferro magnetic.
- Non-magnetic, if specifically required.
- Alternative to Lead.
- Non-Toxic.
- Corrosion resistant.
- Easily machined.
- Easily mechanically joined, brazed or shrunk fit to other materials.
- Equivalents to most commercial specifications available.

Counterweights made from tungsten alloy
Due to its special properties, tungsten heavy alloy block is usually used in the counterweight of yacht, sailboats, submarines, etc.
Chinatungsten bears abundant experience in supply of tungsten alloy counterweights to different overseas yachts’ manufacturers, up to the most specific designs requirement.
Brick-shape counterweights are the typical one we have ever been supplying in bulk quantities. By their own, our client designs and machines the bricks into the integrated tungsten counterweight parts with tungsten alloy pins’ connecting function.
If you are the yacht producer, if you are in need of tungsten alloy counterweight, just feel free to contact our sales team sales@chinatungsten.com.

Pictures of tungsten alloy counterweight:

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