4 ms·

It matches marketing hype, but they seem to have a timeline of this summer. Does anyone know the drawbacks of this material? > The result is a material that ha

by mmooss 1y ago

It matches marketing hype, but they seem to have a timeline of this summer. Does anyone know the drawbacks of this material? > The result is a material that has 50% more tensile strength than steel with a strength-to-weight ratio that’s 10 times better ... Maybe torsional, compression, flex, etc. strength isn't so good? Otherwise, why focus on the construction industry? How about airplanes? Cars and trucks?

apothegm 1y ago
Maybe limitations wrt the shapes it can easily take on? One of steel’s advantages in vehicles is its plasticity. Whereas construction mostly just requires materials that are flat and straight.
- achow 1y ago
  Out of three material manipulation techniques: Cutting, Joining & Forming, it would fall short on 'Forming'.
  - JonChesterfield 1y ago
    Maybe not - if you steam wood you can bend it lots. The compression part might then be doable with rollers, loosely like forcing extruded steel.
    - apothegm 1y ago
      To some degree. But you’re probably not going to get strength out of sharp bends. And does steaming interfere with this treatment? I’m assuming there’s a reason this story includes a quote at the end that’s specifically about I-beams.
  - apothegm 1y ago
    Yup, and there are also limitations on joining. Steel and wood are joined in very different ways with different physical properties of their joints and different spatial profiles for joints as well. You can’t weld wood.
RetroTechie 1y ago
> Otherwise, why focus on the construction industry? How about airplanes? Cars and trucks? Space elevators!
- dsign 1y ago
  Those can't be made with beaMs. Must invert concepts and switch a consonant. Suggested course of action is to genetically engineer a tree that directly makes itself of this super-strong wood and grows all the way up there. Tree must come from beaNs.
- devoutsalsa 1y ago
  There's are wooden escalators... Stairway to haven: Antwerp’s wooden escalators are among the last in use in the world -- https://www.belganewsagency.eu/stairway-to-haven-antwerps-wooden-escalators-are-among-the-last-in-use-in-the-world https://www.belganewsagency.eu/stairway-to-haven-antwerps-wo... How about wooden space escalators?!
Youden 1y ago
A YouTuber reproduced the process: https://youtu.be/CglNRNrMFGM https://youtu.be/CglNRNrMFGM (The original process is documented in the Nature article: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476) I suspect the issue with the other use-cases you mentioned is that it's very rigid. It isn't at all ductile or bendable the way steel is. It would either need to be pressed directly into the shape you need during manufacturing or pressed into a large piece of raw stock then subtractively processed to get the shape you need. Pressing might be economic for standard profiles like beams but it won't be for pieces like the chassis of a car. To be clear, "pressing" here doesn't just mean a standard hydraulic press, the press also needs to be heated and the wood needs to be held under pressure for a while. You can't just stamp it the way you can with steel panels.
- worthless-trash 1y ago
  Could you imagine how nice it would be to have the wood pressed into a single panel like like the tesla gigapress. I realise that it would have its drawbacks, but that wood paneling would look sublime.
  - rafaelmn 1y ago
    "How do I make EVs more flammable ?" On the flip side at least when they catch on fire they will probably burn cleaner ?
    - mensetmanusman 1y ago
      EVs are 10x less flammable than ICEs, so the wood would help bridge the gap.
      - wizzwizz4 1y ago
        Are you sure EV batteries are less flammable than diesel?
    - PaulRobinson 1y ago
vogu66 1y ago
I looked up the numbers in the original paper a little (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476) I don't know much about materials science, but I had a few classes about it. Seems like their wood gets ~550 MPa in ultimate strength in tension. Seems like their material is brittle (so it behaves like a spring until it breaks), therefore you probably want a safety margin, because at 550 MPa it breaks. Note the unit is a Force/Area, you can compare materials with the same cross-section. In compression they say it's about 160 MPa in axial load, it can be more or less in the other directions (due to wood having fiber it's not the same in all directions, and there they compress it perpendicular to the fiber so they get one direction stronger than the axial load and one weaker, but I guess for a beam you mostly care about axial strength). Torsion and flexion are directly dependent on compression, shear and tension, didn't find shear. Although I'm not entirely sure how it works for materials that aren't the same in all three directions like steel. For steel, depends on the steel but a quick search (https://www.steelconstruction.info/Steel_material_properties https://www.steelconstruction.info/Steel_material_properties and https://eurocodeapplied.com/design/en1993/steel-design-properties https://eurocodeapplied.com/design/en1993/steel-design-prope...) says ~200 to 400 MPa in tension for yield, at which point it starts changing shape instead of behaving like a spring, then 350 to 550 MPa for strength, at which point it breaks. I believe in multiple applications they do go apply forces where the metal bends a bit and adapts to its application, but I'm not sure. Regardless, that would mean the wood in tension is equivalent to very strong (presumably very expensive) steel. In compression, steel is from 170 to 370 MPa apparently(https://blog.redguard.com/compressive-strength-of-steel https://blog.redguard.com/compressive-strength-of-steel, didn't find much else easily because numbers were strange on other sources), so I guess steel would win on that one. But this is comparing the raw strength. In reinforced concrete, you add the metal for tension resistance, concrete is there to sustain compression, so it wouldn't matter much. For beams, the shape of beams is optimised to resist in the direction it needs (e.g. the H cross-section resists to bending in one direction). But you probably can't do that with their wood (they say for now they are limited in shapes), so you'd need more material, and probably it would be stronger overall since you have more material. Question then is how much material (in weight, compared to steel) do you need (they say 10 times less but it probably doesn't take into account the shape), and how much does it cost? I'm guessing they could also make composite beams at some points too, with not only wood in them. Then for mechanical applications, there might be also other things that enter the game. In their paper they needed to coat the wood so it wouldn't swell with humidity. For any application with friction, not great. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if it's more sensitive to friction than metals. Note that the numbers are from 2018, they may have improved the process.
CrimsonCape 1y ago
I work in the industry and forsee the drawback being the price and the market. To buy any kind of "engineered" wood the most cost-effective options will be parallel strand lumber followed by glue-laminated lumber. This product is going to be extremely expensive and will not complete with existing engineered woods.

by mmooss 1y ago

apothegm 1y ago

Maybe limitations wrt the shapes it can easily take on? One of steel’s advantages in vehicles is its plasticity. Whereas construction mostly just requires materials that are flat and straight.

achow 1y ago
Out of three material manipulation techniques: Cutting, Joining & Forming, it would fall short on 'Forming'.
- JonChesterfield 1y ago
  Maybe not - if you steam wood you can bend it lots. The compression part might then be doable with rollers, loosely like forcing extruded steel.
  - apothegm 1y ago
    To some degree. But you’re probably not going to get strength out of sharp bends. And does steaming interfere with this treatment? I’m assuming there’s a reason this story includes a quote at the end that’s specifically about I-beams.
- apothegm 1y ago
  Yup, and there are also limitations on joining. Steel and wood are joined in very different ways with different physical properties of their joints and different spatial profiles for joints as well. You can’t weld wood.

RetroTechie 1y ago

> Otherwise, why focus on the construction industry? How about airplanes? Cars and trucks? Space elevators!

dsign 1y ago
Those can't be made with beaMs. Must invert concepts and switch a consonant. Suggested course of action is to genetically engineer a tree that directly makes itself of this super-strong wood and grows all the way up there. Tree must come from beaNs.
devoutsalsa 1y ago
There's are wooden escalators... Stairway to haven: Antwerp’s wooden escalators are among the last in use in the world -- https://www.belganewsagency.eu/stairway-to-haven-antwerps-wooden-escalators-are-among-the-last-in-use-in-the-world https://www.belganewsagency.eu/stairway-to-haven-antwerps-wo... How about wooden space escalators?!

Youden 1y ago

A YouTuber reproduced the process: https://youtu.be/CglNRNrMFGM https://youtu.be/CglNRNrMFGM (The original process is documented in the Nature article: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476) I suspect the issue with the other use-cases you mentioned is that it's very rigid. It isn't at all ductile or bendable the way steel is. It would either need to be pressed directly into the shape you need during manufacturing or pressed into a large piece of raw stock then subtractively processed to get the shape you need. Pressing might be economic for standard profiles like beams but it won't be for pieces like the chassis of a car. To be clear, "pressing" here doesn't just mean a standard hydraulic press, the press also needs to be heated and the wood needs to be held under pressure for a while. You can't just stamp it the way you can with steel panels.

worthless-trash 1y ago
Could you imagine how nice it would be to have the wood pressed into a single panel like like the tesla gigapress. I realise that it would have its drawbacks, but that wood paneling would look sublime.
- rafaelmn 1y ago
  "How do I make EVs more flammable ?" On the flip side at least when they catch on fire they will probably burn cleaner ?
  - mensetmanusman 1y ago
    EVs are 10x less flammable than ICEs, so the wood would help bridge the gap.
    - wizzwizz4 1y ago
      Are you sure EV batteries are less flammable than diesel?
  - PaulRobinson 1y ago

vogu66 1y ago

I looked up the numbers in the original paper a little (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476) I don't know much about materials science, but I had a few classes about it. Seems like their wood gets ~550 MPa in ultimate strength in tension. Seems like their material is brittle (so it behaves like a spring until it breaks), therefore you probably want a safety margin, because at 550 MPa it breaks. Note the unit is a Force/Area, you can compare materials with the same cross-section. In compression they say it's about 160 MPa in axial load, it can be more or less in the other directions (due to wood having fiber it's not the same in all directions, and there they compress it perpendicular to the fiber so they get one direction stronger than the axial load and one weaker, but I guess for a beam you mostly care about axial strength). Torsion and flexion are directly dependent on compression, shear and tension, didn't find shear. Although I'm not entirely sure how it works for materials that aren't the same in all three directions like steel. For steel, depends on the steel but a quick search (https://www.steelconstruction.info/Steel_material_properties https://www.steelconstruction.info/Steel_material_properties and https://eurocodeapplied.com/design/en1993/steel-design-properties https://eurocodeapplied.com/design/en1993/steel-design-prope...) says ~200 to 400 MPa in tension for yield, at which point it starts changing shape instead of behaving like a spring, then 350 to 550 MPa for strength, at which point it breaks. I believe in multiple applications they do go apply forces where the metal bends a bit and adapts to its application, but I'm not sure. Regardless, that would mean the wood in tension is equivalent to very strong (presumably very expensive) steel. In compression, steel is from 170 to 370 MPa apparently(https://blog.redguard.com/compressive-strength-of-steel https://blog.redguard.com/compressive-strength-of-steel, didn't find much else easily because numbers were strange on other sources), so I guess steel would win on that one. But this is comparing the raw strength. In reinforced concrete, you add the metal for tension resistance, concrete is there to sustain compression, so it wouldn't matter much. For beams, the shape of beams is optimised to resist in the direction it needs (e.g. the H cross-section resists to bending in one direction). But you probably can't do that with their wood (they say for now they are limited in shapes), so you'd need more material, and probably it would be stronger overall since you have more material. Question then is how much material (in weight, compared to steel) do you need (they say 10 times less but it probably doesn't take into account the shape), and how much does it cost? I'm guessing they could also make composite beams at some points too, with not only wood in them. Then for mechanical applications, there might be also other things that enter the game. In their paper they needed to coat the wood so it wouldn't swell with humidity. For any application with friction, not great. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if it's more sensitive to friction than metals. Note that the numbers are from 2018, they may have improved the process.

CrimsonCape 1y ago

I work in the industry and forsee the drawback being the price and the market. To buy any kind of "engineered" wood the most cost-effective options will be parallel strand lumber followed by glue-laminated lumber. This product is going to be extremely expensive and will not complete with existing engineered woods.