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Artificial superstrong silkworm silk surpasses natural spider silks

cell.com

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Re: Artificial superstrong silkworm silk surpasses natural spider silks

#5

Post by 14 »

Blammar wrote: post #3
chatterhead wrote: post #2

This is really neat. I hope they are secretly creating a hand-based slinger for this super strong spider silk.

I want to see a braided rope made with this stuff...

I would imagine you could use ultra thin rope for heavy loads. I worked at a bungy jump place once and we had members of the Canadian military come to our bridge to test some very thin paracord. The rope they used did not look like it would be able to hold them but it did. But this silk is obviously way stronger then what they had I could only imagine how thin it would be and have the same strength

Re: Artificial superstrong silkworm silk surpasses natural spider silks

#6

Post by staticassertion »

Very interesting. Currently there are genetically modified silkworms that produce spider silk but it's not quite as good as the real thing. This method basically tries to "up" the silkwork silk to make it better. The metric they use is tensile strength. Curious to see applications.

Re: Artificial superstrong silkworm silk surpasses natural spider silks

#7

Post by fire »

anu7df wrote: post #4

Tensile strength of 2 GPa for this silk compared to 0.4 to 0.8 GPa for steel. Really cool.. This is without including the strength to weight aspect!

I actually don't understand how they do tensile strength testing between steel and silk - doesn't silk stretch or yield?

Re: Artificial superstrong silkworm silk surpasses natural spider silks

#8

Post by anu7df »

fire wrote: post #7
anu7df wrote: post #4

Tensile strength of 2 GPa for this silk compared to 0.4 to 0.8 GPa for steel. Really cool.. This is without including the strength to weight aspect!

I actually don't understand how they do tensile strength testing between steel and silk - doesn't silk stretch or yield?

Elastic stretching, the one that reverses completely on taking the load off, is the regime where there is a linear relationship between the stress load and the stretching. This should be seen as different from yielding which in mechanical testing is an irreversible change usually signifying a destructive change in the material. So, yes, silk stretches but is not damaged while doing so and the resistance it provides at the time relates to its strength.

Re: Artificial superstrong silkworm silk surpasses natural spider silks

#9

Post by anu7df »

staticassertion wrote: post #6

Very interesting. Currently there are genetically modified silkworms that produce spider silk but it's not quite as good as the real thing. This method basically tries to "up" the silkwork silk to make it better. The metric they use is tensile strength. Curious to see applications.

There are also genetically modified goats that produce spider silk in its milk. The protein that is, not long strands in the milk :)
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