3 ms·
While diamonds are super hard, they'd make pretty poor structural materials. They don't stand up well to compressive forces, which is essential for buildings.
by lojack 10y ago
While diamonds are super hard, they'd make pretty poor structural materials. They don't stand up well to compressive forces, which is essential for buildings.
- jdmichal 10y agoThey are very good at withstanding compressive forces, at least on small scales. It's shearing forces that I would be concerned with. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_properties_of_diamond#Pressure_resistance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_properties_of_diamond... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_anvil_cell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_anvil_cell
- snovv_crash 10y agoThe compressive strength can't be greater than sqrt(2)*shear, because at that point you get a diagonal shear. It might be a slightly different ratio if the material has different directional strengths, but the principle holds. At least, that's what I was taught in MechEng Materials.
- jdmichal 10y agoInteresting. I know that as a crystal, diamond is going to have directional cleaving planes. Intuition says that that would be an issue with shearing loads, but at the same time it can obviously withstand very high pressures. I don't have any mech. background, so I appreciate your better informed viewpoint.