3 ms·
Could reinforced concrete be made with silk instead of steel?
by nico 4y ago
Could reinforced concrete be made with silk instead of steel?
- greenpresident 4y agoMy high school physics understanding of reinforced concrete is that the coefficients of expansion for steel and concrete are similar to a degree that it is very resilient to heat stress. I doubt that's the case for silk.
- Gravityloss 4y agoAlso, steel, while more expensive than concrete, is still cheap compared to many other solutions for tensile strength. Also it tensile strength is sufficient for steel reinforced concrete. Concrete itself has performance limits for compression strength.
- adrian_b 4y agoThe problem for such an application is not the strength, but the chemical stability in time. For it to be competitive, it would be necessary for the rate of hydrolysis of the protein fibers (which breaks the fibers) in an alkaline environment to be less than the rate at which rusting diminishes the strength of steel bars. This is very unlikely. At most there might be a chance for such fibers to be used for reinforcing some other kind of cement, less alkaline than the common cements. Also, for reinforcement applications, good adhesion between the reinforcing material and the reinforced material is necessary, which for silk vs. a mineral cement would need some kind of extra adhesive coating of the fibers, with adequate properties, which might be hard to discover.
- mkingston 4y agoThese are of course, good points; cement probably being more porous than many people perceive. Just a little (hopefully interesting) speculation: adhesion might be less important, or entirely unnecessary if the reinforcing material isn't arranged like rebar. I.e. if it were just a tangle in the concrete.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoCouldn't you coat the silk in some other material to get around that?