4 ms·

may be a material of future - "compressed" wood stronger and lighter than steel https://www.fastcompany.com/91334748/superwood-stronger-than-steel-its-coming-to

by trhway 9mo ago

may be a material of future - "compressed" wood stronger and lighter than steel https://www.fastcompany.com/91334748/superwood-stronger-than-steel-its-coming-to-building-near-you https://www.fastcompany.com/91334748/superwood-stronger-than... "has a 50% greater tensile strength than steel and a strength-to-weight ratio that’s 10 times better. "

moomoo11 9mo ago
what about bamboo? could that be "compressed" and used? bc that stuff grows like crazy and is easy to harvest.
- throwup238 9mo ago
  It’s called engineered bamboo [1] but it’s not widely used yet as a load bearing material because manufacturers are still working on certifying it with building code organizations (and it may not be strong enough). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_bamboo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_bamboo
  - moomoo11 9mo ago
    that's really cool! i'm no expert at this stuff, but i used to live in a home that had a bamboo garden maintained by a housemate. that stuff was so strong, i used it to make a box lol
    - throwup238 9mo ago
      Bamboo is orthotropic so it’s strong parallel to its fibers but much weaker perpendicular to them whereas wood is adapted to grow in both directions at the expense of being much slower. When you start adding fasteners (screws, nails, etc) bamboo starts to split along the fibers, becoming brittle and weakening the entire support structure. That’s not to say it’s not strong enough necessarily, but building with bamboo requires different construction techniques and people are still working on validating its safety and updating building codes, which takes decades.
syntaxing 9mo ago
Nile red made a fun video about the original prototype (transparent wood)!
coryrc 9mo ago
"Regular" wood is already good enough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascent_MKE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascent_MKE
- aspenmayer 9mo ago
  It's hardly "regular wood" though, as the structure mentioned was constructed using a specific kind of engineered compressed wood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InventWood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InventWood > In 2018, [Liangbing] Hu's laboratory reported that partially removing lignin from natural wood and then compressing the remaining cellulose under heat produced a material roughly three times denser than the original timber and an order of magnitude stronger in bending and tension.[2] The material was commercially named Superwood. > [2]: https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fnature25476 https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fnature25476 | https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476
  - coryrc 9mo ago
    No, it was glulams, CLT, and LVLs. Nothing compressed particularly hard, just enough for the glue to hold.

by trhway 9mo ago

moomoo11 9mo ago

what about bamboo? could that be "compressed" and used? bc that stuff grows like crazy and is easy to harvest.

throwup238 9mo ago
It’s called engineered bamboo [1] but it’s not widely used yet as a load bearing material because manufacturers are still working on certifying it with building code organizations (and it may not be strong enough). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_bamboo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_bamboo
- moomoo11 9mo ago
  that's really cool! i'm no expert at this stuff, but i used to live in a home that had a bamboo garden maintained by a housemate. that stuff was so strong, i used it to make a box lol
  - throwup238 9mo ago
    Bamboo is orthotropic so it’s strong parallel to its fibers but much weaker perpendicular to them whereas wood is adapted to grow in both directions at the expense of being much slower. When you start adding fasteners (screws, nails, etc) bamboo starts to split along the fibers, becoming brittle and weakening the entire support structure. That’s not to say it’s not strong enough necessarily, but building with bamboo requires different construction techniques and people are still working on validating its safety and updating building codes, which takes decades.

syntaxing 9mo ago

Nile red made a fun video about the original prototype (transparent wood)!

coryrc 9mo ago

"Regular" wood is already good enough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascent_MKE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascent_MKE

aspenmayer 9mo ago
It's hardly "regular wood" though, as the structure mentioned was constructed using a specific kind of engineered compressed wood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InventWood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InventWood > In 2018, [Liangbing] Hu's laboratory reported that partially removing lignin from natural wood and then compressing the remaining cellulose under heat produced a material roughly three times denser than the original timber and an order of magnitude stronger in bending and tension.[2] The material was commercially named Superwood. > [2]: https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fnature25476 https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fnature25476 | https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476
- coryrc 9mo ago
  No, it was glulams, CLT, and LVLs. Nothing compressed particularly hard, just enough for the glue to hold.