14 ms·
Crushed wood is stronger than steel
- kingkongjaffa 9y agoThe title is completely false. Metals are used for their material properties more than just strength but homogeneous strength and stiffness (in all directions) and tolerance to a wide range of environmental conditions (thermal and moisture cycling) Not to mention ease of manufacturing. The material described in the article will never make it out of the lab.
- userbinator 9y ago...products like this already exist, so maybe it will just lead to a refinement of an existing process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardboard
- icegreentea2 9y agoI broadly agree with you, but I think your being a little bit harsh. If the material is sufficiently robust to environmental conditions, then there is room for a strong, directionally biased material. It just won't broadly replace steel (or other alloys). It could find useful niche applications. If its environmentally stable. For example, carbon fiber has so many other nice properties that we'll put up with its directional strength and weave it. Really, this isn't a bid to replace steel or al, but a bid to replace carbon fiber.
- jacquesm 9y agoEngineered wood has been a thing for over 100 years. Wood has a lot of desirable properties that make it a good construction material (fire resistance for instance is much better than steel). This article is definitely missing the wood for the trees to some extent, but it is an interesting development and even if the gain isn't going to be quite as large as indicated and there are some serious questions about whether it will scale or not that does not mean it isn't interesting research. But I agree with you that this is not exactly around the corner for mass production, a whole pile of problems would need to be solved and after they are the product may well end up not being economically viable.
- phonon 9y ago> (fire resistance for instance is much better than steel). Specifically, steel melts/weakens in a fire, which can result in loss of structural integrity, while heavy timber will char and then very slowly burn. http://www.mace.manchester.ac.uk/project/research/structures/strucfire/materialInFire/Timber/default.htm http://www.mace.manchester.ac.uk/project/research/structures... http://www.nzwood.co.nz/faqs/which-building-material-performs-better-in-a-fire-wood-or-steel/ http://www.nzwood.co.nz/faqs/which-building-material-perform...
- baud147258 9y agoWhen the steel is inside concrete (in case of reinforced concrete), doesn't the concrete protect the steel? And since it's how most steel is used in construction, doesn't steel has an advantage here?
- masklinn 9y agoConcrete does provide some form of insulation as it has a fairly low rate of heat transfer. At the end of the day it'll still heat up though, and it's that heating up which weakens the steel, direct contact is not a requirement (there are specific methods like insulated concrete form which have higher fire resistance).
- MrLeap 9y agoI have a technique I'd use to add heat resistance to steel. Only necessary If we lived in a doomed world where engineers didn't exist and I was asked to make steel more heat resistant. Cover steel beams in a relatively thick later of plaster of paris mixed with very find grain sand. I built a charcoal forge out of that material (I used quartz sand I got from a pool supply store) and it's ludicrously heat resistant. It's lined with 4mm of aluminum (melting point 660°C) and the plastersand layer is about 25mm thick. I can melt steel bar above it without causing any visual changes in the aluminum body. I've used it about 20 times in the last year. Lots of spalling on the plaster layer but for most architectural applications I doubt you need to have a blower fueled inferno happen > 2 times a week during the summer. I wager real engineers have more cost effective, data driven solutions. Just thought it was a neat fact.
- yesenadam 9y ago>The title is completely false. No idea why you claimed that. What is completely false is your claim, by the sound of it. Did the title claim anything about properties other than strength? No. I think you may have meant "The title is misleading (although literally true)" or something. edit: Would downvoters care to explain why? Thanks.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- noworld 9y agoAnd if you keep crushing it then it will become as hard as a diamond.
- yAnonymous 9y agoAnd if you keep going, you'll eventually create a black hole.
- gonvaled 9y agoMini black hole, evaporating fast unless you feed it faster!
- beobab 9y agoAnnnnd... Now I'm reading about black holes, no-hair theorems, how zero mass particles behave around black holes. Goodbye productivity! :)
- platz 9y agohttps://youtu.be/_8bhtEgB8Mo https://youtu.be/_8bhtEgB8Mo Black hole firewalls is a favorite conundrum of mine.
- jahnu 9y agoAre there any interesting trivia figures for that? Like how long would it take to evaporate a black hole with an event horizon the size of a basketball, golf ball, grain of sand, whatever?
- anvandare 9y agoYou can play around with it here: http://xaonon.dyndns.org/hawking/ http://xaonon.dyndns.org/hawking/ * basketball (radius ~ 12cm): 1.4e54 years * golf ball (radius ~ 2cm): 6.5e51 years * grain of sand (radius ~ 1mm): 8.1e47 years So all of them "so ludicrously long that these are just numbers". To put it in human terms: * a black hole with a mass of 70 kilograms will evaporate in 0.028 nanoseconds * a black hole that will evaporate in 80 years has a mass of ~ 311,000 tons, and would be... Impossibly small (2000 times smaller than a proton charge radius). And that's why most of the time of the universe (from 10^40 years, long after the last stars have died, until 10^100 years) will be just black holes vaporizing, after which (10^100 to 10^2500) years it'll be just a few stray protons, photons, and electrons floating around (assuming they don't disintegrate either). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe#Black_Hole_Era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_univers...
- jacquesm 9y agoThe most expensive wooden floors have the end grain exposed facing upwards and this is then compressed down, much like the top of a good quality butchers block. Those floors are just about indestructible. The heavier such floors are used the stronger they get! The wood in the article is compressed crosswise to the grain (so they get thinner rather than shorter), using the original planks as the raw organic material to produce an engineered product that has relatively little to do with the original wood. While this is very impressive the process does not sound cheap (it is time consuming and will produce quite a bit of toxic waste) and the way the article is worded leaves it ambiguous of the strength increase is relative to the original base material or if it is on an absolute scale using the same cross section. The article states the result is 10 times stronger than the original after being compressed to 1/5th of the size, making it effectively thinner, lighter and stronger at the same time. It appears that the increase in density is where the writer missed the fact that reducing the cross section but leaving the amount of material the same does not result in an increase in strength on an absolute scale, it merely means that if you then laminated five of the densified planks back to the original cross section the result would be 11 times stronger. But then you'd lose much of the weight advantage. So I suspect this is either a space or a strength gain, but not both to the extent the article indicates. In the previous century there was a lot of research done on strengthening wood including gamma radiation and all kinds of other treatments, but none of those ever made it to very high levels of industrial adoption.
- nck4222 9y ago>making it effectively thinner, lighter and stronger at the same time. The article never says it's lighter, and the paper is behind a paywall. Interesting process none the less.
- jacquesm 9y agoIt does say it is lighter, it says it removes certain compounds from the wood and then compresses the remainder without further additives. So it is lighter than the original wood but much more dense.
- lr4444lr 9y agoInteresting, but what about biodegradability? Will it not be eroded by microorganisms in the outdoors over time? It is still wood, after all.
- Filligree 9y agoIt's still wood, and wood is only barely biodegradable. If you take decent care of it it'll last for centuries.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoA fallen tree in damp conditions rots down in a year or so. Seems pretty biodegradable. Your second sentence I have no problem with.
- thecatspaw 9y agoa fallen tree will also easily get overrun by bugs and animals and does not have a closed surface, making it prone to rot
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoIsn't that biodegrading? Surely almost anything can be cared for to prevent biodegrading.
- mr_overalls 9y agoYeah, "decent care" means "kept away from moisture, fire, and bugs." Such care can be difficult in the long term, but yields results like the beautiful 700 year-old woodwork in this English cathedral. (And of course the comments mention the Buddhist temple Hōryū-ji.) http://blog.longnow.org/02009/01/12/how-long-can-wood-last/ http://blog.longnow.org/02009/01/12/how-long-can-wood-last/
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoI agree completely. The only part I disagree with its the claim wood is "barely biodegradable". Almost anything can be preserved.
- jackpeterfletch 9y agoJet fuel can't melt wooden beams.
- tzahola 9y agoDefine "stronger"
- jacquesm 9y agoThe article is pretty confused about what they mean by stronger, on the one hand they use language that suggests tensile strength but they then go on to illustrate some non-quantitative measure by talking about penetration by pellets and deformation in collision like situations.
- icegreentea2 9y agoThe paper is behind a pay wall, but their figures and extended data stuff is free to view here: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476#extended-data https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476#extended-data They say that their ultimate tensile strength of their material is ~600 MPa. Steel ranges from 250-2500 MPa.
- IshKebab 9y agoTypically it means UTS (Ultimate Tensile Strength), except in articles where "X is stronger than Y" when it means the weakest property of Y.
- willvarfar 9y agoPeople may also find Pykrete interesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete Its adding wood pulp to ice to make the ice much much tougher. It was invented by the epitome boffin Geoffrey Pyke, who proposed they build an aircraft carrier of it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk
- ryanianian 9y agoThey actually started the planning and final R&D! (That is before they realized that a slowly-melting ship isn't the most stable or sustainable solution to sea-travel and -defense.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk
- tclancy 9y agoThere was a short piece on 99% Invisible about this recently: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/mini-stories-volume-3/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/mini-stories-volume-3... (worth a listen just for the part about the plaque they erected (?) where the ship now sits).
- logfromblammo 9y agoDid you mean to say "eponymic" instead of "epitome"?
- willvarfar 9y agoI meant he was the epitome boffin. But yeah, he was eponymic to Pykrete too :)
- grizzles 9y agoRecently a graphene manufacturing process has been discovered that involved taking sheets of a high carbon wood (elm iirc) and shining a laser at it inside an argon atmosphere to make a surface layer of graphene. When I first heard about it I thought of this use case and couldn't help but wonder if the technique might work with IPL or some other generalized light source with a longer illumination period. It would be cool to find out.
- afrnld 9y agohow is it "eco-friendly"?
- HenryBemis 9y agoI remember some time ago, watching an megafactories episode [1], about IKEA, and they described how they create durable, strong wooden frames, which they later using into making various furnitures. I am surprised there is no reference to that process, as I believe IKEA's has probably done 'a lot' of R&D on everything-wood (and probably disqualifies using $$$ criteria). [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXI6Z3t6PDY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXI6Z3t6PDY
- danso 9y agoReminds me of the surprising strength of armor made out of folded paper: http://mythbusters.wikia.com/wiki/Paper_Armor_Myth http://mythbusters.wikia.com/wiki/Paper_Armor_Myth
- waytogo 9y agoSuper interesting piece and as somebody who is interested in many things I appreciate such articles. But seeing this on #1 feels a bit off on HN. Is there a slight possibility that the feed is sometimes curated (eg through different voting powers)?
- ewi_ 9y agoOr there is simply quite a few people like you who find this interesting, as the YC posting guidelines put it: "If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
- danso 9y ago"Super interesting" sounds like a good metric for top-voted entries, especially at 4AM (PST)
- Agathos 9y agoSteel is the Worf of materials science.
- boobsbr 9y agoCare to explain, please?
- Ajedi32 9y agoIt's a reference to [The Worf Effect][1]. [1]: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWorfEffect http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWorfEffect
- Agathos 9y agoExactly. Just to amuse myself, I spent a few minutes googling for materials that are "stronger than steel." spider silk (a classic): https://www.npr.org/2017/01/14/509807212/spider-silk-is-stronger-than-steel-and-now-it-can-be-made-in-a-lab https://www.npr.org/2017/01/14/509807212/spider-silk-is-stro... bone: http://ipfactly.com/human-bone-is-stronger-than-steel/ http://ipfactly.com/human-bone-is-stronger-than-steel/ a graphene sponge: https://www.materialstoday.com/mechanical-properties/news/spongeshaped-materials-can-be-stronger-than-steel/ https://www.materialstoday.com/mechanical-properties/news/sp... carbon nanotubes: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2010/acs-presspac-september-15-2010/carbon-nanotubes-twice-as-strong-as-once-thought.html https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2010/... silica nanofibers (because carbon is old news): https://prescouter.com/2013/02/new-material-is-lighter-than-plastic-but-stronger-than-steel/ https://prescouter.com/2013/02/new-material-is-lighter-than-... fiber-reinforced hydrogel: https://www.global.hokudai.ac.jp/blog/new-tougher-than-metal-fiber-reinforced-hydrogels/ https://www.global.hokudai.ac.jp/blog/new-tougher-than-metal... One starts to wonder if steel was ever all that strong. But I'm sure the real lesson is there are a lot of ways to measure strength.
- jccalhoun 9y agoYes, there are tons of things "stronger than steel" but lack the other advantages of steel.
- saipardhu 9y agoHumans find another reason to kill the life on our planet now!
- tekkk 9y agoDidn't Hydraulic Press Channel do something similar with crushing a paper sheet until it turned stonish? Well not that similar but it was an interesting phenomenon nonetheless.
- kirillseva 9y agoBut can jet fuel melt crushed wood?
- mcguire 9y ago"Five layers of the material laminated together — just 3 millimetres thick in total — was able to halt a 46-gram steel projectile travelling at roughly 30 metres per second. [...] That’s much slower than the several hundred metres per second at which a bullet travels, says Hu, but it is comparable to the speed at which a car might be moving before a collision, making the material possibly suitable for use in vehicles." That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. Nature? A ballistic impact seems like a poor model for a vehicular impact. You don't want a car to resist impacts the way armor stops bullets. A large, slow projectile isn't a small fast projectile, but should be comparable. This section seems meaningless.
- justinlardinois 9y agoAlso, you _want_ a car to crumple on impact, so the passengers aren't taking the brunt of the force.
- dogprez 9y agoReminds me of Raymond Feist's Riftwar Cycle. The Tsurani's planet was devoid of metal so they had all wooden armor and weapons... uncomfortable silence
- logfromblammo 9y agoThe Feist collaboration with Janny Wurts went into much more detail, and is in my opinion more readable than Feist's solo work. Basically, as materials science goes, they skipped everything about metallurgy and went straight to ceramics, polymers, and composites. Seems like Feist took the concept from Teng-dynasty paper armor and just ran with it, including the pseudo-Asian flavor of the Tsurani.
- ajarmst 9y ago*For some values of 'stronger'.
- tlholaday 9y agoFire? Termites?
- fouric 9y ago"...eco-friendly alternative to using plastics and metals..." Would someone be able to explain to me why metal isn't "eco-friendly"? I understand that some plastics degrade into small, unfriendly particles over time (and others can't be recycled), but I always thought that metals were fairly easy to recycle with a very high recovery rate.
- wyldfire 9y agoMaybe they're harder to harvest from the Earth -- costs more resources per unit to mine than logging?
- jfrankamp 9y agoMining ore, processing metal is difficult and energy intensive and produces waste tailings. Steel doesn't grow on trees while wood does. It is unclear from my reading whether or not the process in the article produces a lot of waste, or if the chem bath they use can be recycled in-situ, but the reduced ecological cost of material acquisition alone makes this idea worth pursuing.
- vanderZwan 9y agoCould be a matter of embodied energy. Growing trees, when done right, comes with a free CO2 sink (not enough to off-set the CO2 produced in harvesting and processing, but it still helps). Metals can be very energy-intensive to refine, even from recycled metals.
- davesque 9y agoI'm guessing this material has more compressive strength but less tensile strength than steel? If so, how could you replace steel with compressed wood as the title implies? They're totally different materials from a mechanical engineer's point of view.
- joshuahedlund 9y agoScientific American has more gee-whiz details: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stronger-than-steel-able-to-stop-a-speeding-bullet-mdash-it-rsquo-s-super-wood/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stronger-than-ste... (I'm totally unqualified to parse between the articles' potential uninformed optimism and fellow commenters' skepticisms)
- qbaqbaqba 9y agoI have read(@ Atomic Adventures by James Mahaffey) about "lockwood" made by irradiating wood. It's supposed to have been quite popular, used for floors, even bows. Have you encounter it?
- tremendulo 9y agoWhy doesn't wood that paves streets biodegrade?
- freehunter 9y agoShort answer: creosote. It's basically tar made from coal, they soak the wood in it and the tar makes the wood far more durable and waterproof. It's the same reason railroad ties can last basically forever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creosote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creosote
- BlytheSchuma 9y ago#NatureIsMetal
- Yetanfou 9y agoIf the wood ends up strongest with 45% of the lignin removed I'd try to engineer a species with a lower lignin content to begin with. So-called 'weeping' varieties (Weeping Willow etc.) get their specific hanging shape from a later onset of cell wall hardening due to delayed lignin deposition so those might be a good start.