Super Wood (2018)
scientificamerican.com
Super Wood (2018)
1–10 of 26 posts
Re: Super Wood (2018)
#2>Perhaps most importantly, the densified wood is also moisture-resistant: In lab tests, compressed samples exposed to extreme humidity for more than five days swelled less than 10 percent—and in subsequent tests, Hu says, a simple coat of paint eliminated that swelling entirely.
This is an improvement, but it doesn’t appear to solve the fundamental problem: rain. In practice most structural materials must survive exposure to not just humid air but liquid water — this is why Sorel cement is not used in construction, for example.
Re: Super Wood (2018)
#3I wish this article had some photos, particularly of the transparent wood.
Re: Super Wood (2018)
#4[deleted]
Re: Super Wood (2018)
#5> Perhaps most importantly, the densified wood is also moisture-resistant: In lab tests, compressed samples exposed to extreme humidity for more than five days swelled less than 10 percent—and in subsequent tests, Hu says, a simple coat of paint eliminated that swelling entirely. This is an improvement, but it doesn’t appear to solve the fundamental problem: rain. In practice most structural materials must survive ex…
Hmm, does the right paint not deal with that?
Re: Super Wood (2018)
#6"The material does not protect quite as well as a Kevlar sheet of the same thickness—but it only costs about 5 percent as much" - Incredible. Millions could be saved to protect the military and police. Additionally it could provide less weighty armor and improve performance. There has been a lot of talk about the weight of full military body armor, and I wonder how much this new material would weigh, and if comparable to kevlar but lighter, could improve performance. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/09/25/army-body-arm...
Re: Super Wood (2018)
#7I wish this article had some photos, particularly of the transparent wood.
Re: Super Wood (2018)
#8It would be appreciated if they used actual units and photos of the "super wood."
"Stronger than (some low ball grade of) steel" is not a unit as it's super easy to sandbag the thing you're comparing to and mislead people about how important the development is.
Are units like MPa or psi not commonly understood by the science-curious public? Why would someone like Scientific American not use actual units? This stuff is taught to basically everyone in high school.
(Maybe this is just the graduate student instructor in me, but it bothers me to no end that regular units are not used...)
EDIT: The paper does, of course use proper units (annoyingly, not in the abstract...).
The densified "super wood" gets a specific strength (strength per unit density) of: 422.2 ± 36.3 MPa/(grams/cm^3).
It is an impressive figure. State of the art carbon fiber is ~3900 MPa/(g/cm^3), though, and lots of other fibers are higher than this "super wood" (including the best grades of Balsa, I believe).
Very thin gauge high performance steel ("piano wire") can exceed this slightly (428MPa/(g/cc))
Re: Super Wood (2018)
#9> Perhaps most importantly, the densified wood is also moisture-resistant: In lab tests, compressed samples exposed to extreme humidity for more than five days swelled less than 10 percent—and in subsequent tests, Hu says, a simple coat of paint eliminated that swelling entirely. This is an improvement, but it doesn’t appear to solve the fundamental problem: rain. In practice most structural materials must survive ex…
Some woods are ok with rain - I've used cypress for outdoor signage for instance and it takes rain well - no warping or that sort of business. If you constrain expansion to one or two dimensions it might be ok.
Re: Super Wood (2018)
#10It would be appreciated if they used actual units and photos of the "super wood." "Stronger than (some low ball grade of) steel" is not a unit as it's super easy to sandbag the thing you're comparing to and mislead people about how important the development is. Are units like MPa or psi not commonly understood by the science-curious public? Why would someone like Scientific American not use actual units? This stuff i…
Thanks for the interesting comparison.
I can imagine the folks who make plywood and pressure treat wood could just add another process and make a new in-demand product.