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Detroit DIYer cooks up stronger, lighter steel, shames scientists

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Re: Detroit DIYer cooks up stronger, lighter steel, shames scientists

#2
The linked article was pretty small, so I went and tried to get a bit more information:

* http://www.bainitesteel.com/ - the company making the product

* http://www.gizmag.com/stronger-steel-in-a-flash/18882/ - a longer and better writeup

* http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/06/flash-bainite-is-strongest-... - another writeup

Looks cool! Though not sure about the flamebait title from the original article. :)

Re: Detroit DIYer cooks up stronger, lighter steel, shames scientists

#4
post #3

Wow amateur metallurgist sounds like a hardcore hobby.

People have the weirdest hobbies. Have a look at this guy: http://www.themysteryworld.com/2011/02/tatara-project-guy-ma...

Making knives starting from the very scratch (that is, making their own steel to start with)

Re: Detroit DIYer cooks up stronger, lighter steel, shames scientists

#5
Just in case anyone is leaping to wrong conclusions: This is neat, but it's not a miracle material. Tensile strength of 1900MPa is quite high for a steel, but it's half as strong as glass fiber. The big advantage here is that it's tougher, and cheaper to make, than fiberglass composite.

Re: Detroit DIYer cooks up stronger, lighter steel, shames scientists

#7
post #3

Wow amateur metallurgist sounds like a hardcore hobby.

A friend of mine is 'bio hacker'; he works with different microbiological organisms to learn about them and build better ones with specific traits. This article describes it better than I can: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101006/full/467650a.html

Re: Detroit DIYer cooks up stronger, lighter steel, shames scientists

#10

Just in case anyone is leaping to wrong conclusions: This is neat, but it's not a miracle material. Tensile strength of 1900MPa is quite high for a steel, but it's half as strong as glass fiber. The big advantage here is that it's tougher, and cheaper to make, than fiberglass composite.

Er, what conclusion is there to jump to other than an accurate one? It's 7% stronger than traditional steel and 30% lighter, with a greatly decreased manufacturing cost. Ok, fine, it's not a "miracle" material since it's not curing the sick or raising the dead. But as long as testing continues to support the conclusion of both the manufacturer and researchers at tOSU (and elsewhere), this seems like an impressive engineering feat.
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