Paper Stronger Than Cast Iron

TaeKwonDood writes "All paper is made of cellulose, which at the nanoscale level is quite strong, but paper processing makes large, fragile fibers that break easily. Researchers in Sweden have have come up with a manufacturing process that keeps the fibers small, resulting in 'nanopaper' with over 1.6 times the tensile strength of cast iron (214 megapascals vs. 130 mPa). And since cellulose is the most abundant organic compound on the planet, it's cheap to use compared to other exotic, expensive-to-produce options — such as carbon nanotubes."

It's strong enough to build a ship

[camperdave (969942)]

It's strong enough to build a ship out of... as long as you don't get it wet.

I always knew Paper was strong!

[davester666 (731373)]

Cuz Paper beats Rock!

Re:It's strong enough to build a ship

[Scaba (183684)]

I think Ding Ding Tssh is the new annoying yet lovable character in the next Star Wars film.

Iron Man's nemesis... PAPER MAN

[Armon (932023)]

Coming next summer, the Epic battle between Robert Downy Jr. as Iron Man, and an unknown antagonists who goes by the mysterious PAPER MAN! /attempt at humor

Re:Iron Man's nemesis... PAPER MAN

[unspokenchaos (1295553)]

perhaps they'll have the entire cast of ROD... hehe...

Re:Iron Man's nemesis... PAPER MAN

[solitas (916005)]

No no no - the girls were the GOOD GUYS, remember? That big trenchcoated mook with the glasses was one of the bad guys. And he dead now.
Awesome anime - did they ever do more?

Re:Iron Man's nemesis... PAPER MAN

[Jesus_666 (702802)]

In an anime, that's not exactly the most unusual revelation...

Re:Iron Man's nemesis... PAPER MAN

[PPH (736903)]

That's paper BOY to you, buddy!

Now watch it, or I'll toss your Sunday edition up on the roof.

Re:Bow to my ninja skills

[SlowMovingTarget (550823)]

And they laughed when I made papier-mâché throwing stars. I'll show them! I am the Paper Ninja (played by Matthew Lillard), and I've just come from OfficeMax!

Great, but is it fireproof?

[Chas (5144)]

Or treatable to be fire-resistant?

I can see a lot of uses for it even if it isn't. But I can see some fairly awe-inspiring ones if it's possible.

Re:Great, but is it fireproof?

[Spy der Mann (805235)]

Or treatable to be fire-resistant?

I can see a lot of uses for it even if it isn't. But I can see some fairly awe-inspiring ones if it's possible.

Guy 1: BWAHAHAHA, BEWARE my super-robot made with nanopaper! It's stronger than steel!
Guy 2: *lights match*
Robot: *FWOOOM*
Guy 1: :(

Re:Great, but is it fireproof?

[phantomfive (622387)]

Could be it doesn't matter for a lot of applications. Houses aren't fireproof, in fact a lot of things arent: clothes, boxes, guitars, plastic, etc. Cast Iron isn't exactly the strongest stuff around, so obviously tensile strength isn't the only important thing in a material. Apparently there is a lot research going on these days about how to make stronger paper. Some links at the bottom of the article.

Re:Great, but is it fireproof?

[mazarin5 (309432)]

I suddenly had an image of Japanese-style paper walls made of this stuff. I wonder how much this would cost after it becomes commonplace? Would it be a viable replacement for drywall or wood? Would it be a good insulator?

Interesting indeed.

Re:Great, but is it fireproof?

[I_am_the_cheese (1264298)]

If nothing else, it will revolutionize the packaging industry. Strong cardboard boxes are a holy grail of packaging.

Other uses? Paper airplanes, coat it with plastic and make a really cheap fishing boat, tape that won't break, temporary floor, single-use knife, non-toxic circuit board for cheap toys... This is a breakthrough in the highest meaning of the word.

Re:Great, but is it fireproof?

[marxmarv (30295)]

Copper-laminated paper circuit boards are already cheap and available. Now if this stuff is or can be made as flexible as paper, you may have just replaced thin film in flexible circuit applications.

I wouldn't sell it on its toxicity benefits though. The chemicals used to mask and etch pc boards are none too friendly and most paper is absorbent.

I wonder if anyone's tried injection molding short chain cellulose yet... it's better to use carbon we have on the surface already than to mine more and bring it into the surface ecosystem to stay.

Re:Great, but is it fireproof?

[zappepcs (820751)]

Actually, you are probably right. More porous and stronger? Sounds like a new paper towel to me. Hmmm what other paper products do we use that might benefit?

Saturated paper products: Tar paper, sheetrock, and other products that are basically using paper to contain some other product, etc.

Non-saturated: string spindles et al, books, food and product packaging materials, shipping materials...

If it turns out that thicker pieces constructed with pressure or other methods, perhaps we'll finally get a throwaway computer or dvr case? Perhaps we'll find that a lot of carbon based plastics might be better created with nanopaper processes? How much oil would that save? How much cleaner could commercial enterprises become?

There are a lot of things that paper is only just a bit less suitable than some other product that creates pollution or distributes toxins either during creation or after it's use.

Obviously, I'm not the expert, but if this can make some of that come true it will be a very good thing.

Perfect application

[starglider29a (719559)]

Wrapping candy bars, USB drives and CD's to make them UTTERLY un-openable.

Milli-pascal?

[dascandy (869781)]

> 214 megapascals vs. 130 mPa

214 megapascal (singular, it's a unit) is about 1.6*10^9 more than 130 millipascal. Use your units properly.

Re:Milli-pascal?

[by Anonymous Coward]

What's he trying to say is that those units should be MPa (capital M and capital P) for both.

Also most steels are above 400 MPa (some as high as 1800) so this isn't that strong, in fact Aluminum alloys can reach into the 400 MPa range.

Cast Iron (in its 2 major forms grey & white cast) is very brittle and therefore does not have good tensile strength. However compressive strength and its good vibration tolerance is why a lot of large machining equipment uses a cast iron base.

Re:Milli-pascal?

[pablomme (1270790)]

Use your units properly.

AND they should be using MebiPascals: "204 MiPa vs. 124 MiPa".

IEC 60027-2 : making life easier for everyone since 1999.

Re:Milli-pascal?

[plover (150551)]

Use your units properly.

AND they should be using MebiPascals: "204 MiPa vs. 124 MiPa".

Mebi they shouldn't.

Re:Milli-pascal?

[pclminion (145572)]

214 megapascal (singular, it's a unit)

Is that really a rule? Not one I was taught.

After I ran 6.2 kilometer yesterday, I was feeling thirsty. So I drank 1.6 liter of water. It took 37 minute to walk back to my car. I fired it up, and saw that the engine was already 52 degree from sitting in the hot sun. I got home, and collapsed from exhaustion. I slept an entire 9 hour.

Maybe it's a rule. I'd rather not sound like a fool though.

Re:Milli-pascal?

[Wyck (254936)]

After I ran 6.2 kilometer yesterday, I was feeling thirsty. So I drank 1.6 liter of water. It took 37 minute to walk back to my car. I fired it up, and saw that the engine was already 52 degree from sitting in the hot sun. I got home, and collapsed from exhaustion. I slept an entire 9 hour.

After a 6.2 kilometer run yesterday, I was feeling thirsty. So I had a 1.6 liter drink of water. It was a 37 minute walk back to my car. I fired it up, and saw it already had a 52 degree engine temperature from sitting in the hot sun. I got home, and collapsed from exhaustion. I had a 9 hour sleep.

Adjective vs. noun usage?

Papery

[Deltaspectre (796409)]

It's just like irony but stronger

awesome - shredproof paper!

[Tumbleweed (3706)]

Perfect for government documents and voting machine audit results. :)

1.6 times

[by Anonymous Coward]

over 1.6 times the tensile strength of cast iron

Considering that cast iron isn't particularly renown for its tensile strength, being 1.6 times stronger isn't that impressive.

Oh, great...

[professorfalcon (713985)]

This is going to mess up so many games of Paper, Rock, and Scissors.

hang on!

[H0D_G (894033)]

Wait, so paper beats scissors now?

One point about grey cast iron

[dbIII (701233)]

The tensile strength of grey cast iron is fairly low because the carbon comes out in the form of graphite. That's right - the same thing that is in pencils. When you have large flakes of graphite, say a few millimetres in size, you have a fairly low tensile strength (stretch it and it breaks) and low toughness (drop it and it cracks). The compressive strength isn't so bad and cast iron is a lot easier to make than steel which is why it is still used.

With the paper there is the advantage that small particle sizes dramaticly increase strength.

Ikea furniture was cheap before...

[TRAyres (1294206)]

But now it will be INDESTRUCTABLE as well!

Fantastic!

cast iron?

[Tmack (593755)]

Really, cast iron is weak in comparison to a lot of metals. 130mPa is also the ultimate strength of human bone [wikipedia.org], which would have made a much more interesting comparison. Cast iron isnt really used as much for anything anymore since steel is much stronger and is almost as cheap. The article's claim to replacing carbon nano tubes is a bit of an exaderation, as they have a strength of 62GPa

Tm

Re:cast iron?

[plover (150551)]

Cast iron's not exactly dead. It's still good for producing relatively intricate parts cheaply. As long as you don't require high accuracy on every surface, you can have a really complex part that's only somewhat more expensive than the scrap iron that goes into it.

Think of a thin stationary engine housing with fins to dissipate heat -- you usually don't care if the fins are within 0.25" of where they're supposed to be; as long as air can pass over them they can do their job. As far as the important surfaces, such as the ones that hold the bearings or that mate with another housing, sure, you'll have to machine those. But if you had to machine all those fins from a solid steel block, or cut a bunch and weld them all on, you'd easily spend three times the money on labor and tooling and have a part that doesn't last as long as a casting.

There are many different alloys of cast iron, and they each have their own set of properties. All are much harder than ordinary steels, and usually have excellent wear resistance. Some alloys allow for more intricate castings. Some are easier to machine. And some, such as white iron, are extremely brittle and almost worthless in tensile strength, but can be treated to crazy levels of hardness. It all depends on your application, and in which properties you require. Steel can't simply be "dropped-in" as a replacement material. Hell, sometimes you can't even substitute ductile cast iron for malleable cast iron.

And I wouldn't count on being able to substitute paper for cast iron, either!

Does this mean better, more useful origami?

[master5o1 (1068594)]

Like Paper Construction Cranes?

Not really news

[Attila (23211)]

Anyone who has ever used a public toilet in Sweden would know that this has been in development for some time.

Re:Don't they realize...

[Garridan (597129)]

Oops, just RTFA'd. They didn't show that paper was as strong as paper. They made paper twice as strong as old "high strength" paper. Which still has very, very little tensile strength. Comparing to cast iron really doesn't help their case.

Re:Don't they realize...

[Jeff DeMaagd (2015)]

But... cast iron has the tensile strength on the order of concrete.

I think you might be two orders of magnitude off. Cast iron shows up as having around 130 to 200MPa (depending on your figures), concrete shows up at 3MPa. Having used it, cast iron can be pretty cheesy stuff. But I imagine that strength-to-weight is pretty good.

Re:First!

[serviscope_minor (664417)]

wood has the highest tensile strength of any building material known to man based either on weight or cross sectional area.

No, steel does. That's why I-beams are steel, not wood. It's also why the cables in suspension bridges are steel, not wood poles.

Not a lot of our building techniques rely primarily on tensile strength, most rely on spanning gaps with weight bearing members.

And what determines how well you can span a gap? A combination of compressive and tensile strength. You need to revise your beam bending...

Tensile strength does come into play on collapsing structures, as weight bearing members are removed, and buildings end up hanging from their walls or rafters.

So what does some in to play? Probably a mixture of tensile and compressive strength, depending on what is failing and why.

Re:First!

[icebike (68054)]

> No, steel does. That's why I-beams are steel, not
> wood. It's also why the cables in suspension
> bridges are steel, not wood poles.

The same weight of wood would be stronger.

Some respect has to be paid to longevity. Who would use wood suspension cables in termite country?

There are also problems of attaching wood to other objects. Hard to weld wood you know.

Re:First!

[fabs64 (657132)]

The same weight of wood would be stronger.
But not the same cross-sectional size.

Re:First!

[rrkap (634128)]

If it's loaded in pure tension, you're right, wood is stronger per unit weight. However one thing that you have be careful of with wood beams is that wood has a very low shear strength which makes beams fail at much lower loads than you would expect from the tensile strength alone. It also isn't very strong in tension across the grain which limits your design freedom.

What is Tensile Strength

[mrcaseyj (902945)]

serviscope_minor wrote:

icebike wrote:

wood has the highest tensile strength of any building material known to man based either on weight or cross sectional area.

No, steel does...

There seems to be some confusion about what tensile strength is. Tensile strength is how well a material can resist pulling, not bending or compression. A rope can show off the tensile strength of a material even though it has no bending strength or compression strength.

Even when adjusting for weight, the tensile strength of wood isn't so great compared to S-glass or carbon fiber. And when adjusting for cross sectional area, the tensile strength of wood fares even worse because it has a lot of air in its pores.

Re:What is Tensile Strength

[mrbluze (1034940)]

There seems to be some confusion about what tensile strength is. Tensile strength is how well a material can resist pulling, not bending or compression.

Exactly, for example, ordinary toilet paper has poor tensile strength, resulting in many a brown finger for some. Let's hope this will stop with our new, stronger-than-steel paper. On the downside we may expect a few more red fingers.

Re:First!

[B3ryllium (571199)]

Great, just what I need - newspapers that groan and snap when I try to read them.

Re:First!

[cez (539085)]

I think the interesting aspect of this is the tensile strength ratio to mass or weight... at first I figured nanopaper would be mad stacked and heavy... but from the FA:

The new nanopaper is "quite interesting," says Mike Wolcott, a materials scientist and cellulose fiber expert at Washington State University in Pullman. In addition to making paper stronger, the nanopaper has large pores between the fibers, which should also make it easier and cheaper to dry, thus reducing the cost of any final product, he says. And because cellulose is the most abundant organic compound on the planet, nanopaper has the potential to be cheaper than more-exotic, expensive-to-produce nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes, says John Simonsen, a physical chemist and nanocrystalline cellulose expert at Oregon State University in Corvallis.

apparently the nanobonds are more porous... would be nice to see some comparison statistics on the physical properties between nanopaper and regular paper per square inch say.

Re:First!

[mrcaseyj (902945)]

Icebike wrote
>...wood has the highest tensile strength of any building material known to man based either on weight or cross sectional area.

I Think your estimate of wood is much too high. Wikipedia's article of tensile strength http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensile_strength lists pine wood at 40 MPa    I know there are some woods that are significantly stronger but still.

For comparison some other tensile strengths listed in MPa are:

Cast Iron           200
structural steel    400
steel piano wire   2500
Concrete              3
HDPE plastic         37
Aluminum Aloy       455
Glass              4710
Carbon fiber       5650
Carbon nanotubes  63000

Re:First!

[Slotty (562298)]

So logically as I'm able to put my fist through glass then I should be able to put my fist through cast iron and structural steel.

The only conclusion I can come to is that I am superman

Re:First!

[GigaplexNZ (1233886)]

Apparently Superman didn't take simple physics at school otherwise he would know what tensile strength meant...

Re:First!

[cp.tar (871488)]

Apparently Superman didn't take simple physics at school otherwise he would know what tensile strength meant...

Well of course he didn't.

Had he taken any physics, he would know he couldn't fly. Tell me, then, what would have happened to Metropolis?

Re:First!

[Vectronic (1221470)]

"Ever tried writing on iron? Not as easy... and folding it to put it in your pocket tends to be difficult."

However, if you etch a piece of metal, you can use it as a stamp to create numerous copies of the etching, and when you hit severe writers block, its much easier to kill yourself with a piece of tin than paper cuts.

Re:Which is not much...

[strength_of_10_men (967050)]

but where does this leave me?