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.

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

[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?

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.

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.

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.

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

Does this mean better, more useful origami?

[master5o1 (1068594)]

Like Paper Construction Cranes?

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!

[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:Which is not much...

[strength_of_10_men (967050)]

but where does this leave me?