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Science Technology

New Metal That's Full of Holes 75

Posted by timothy from the yeah-right dept.
anoopsinha writes "Wired reports: 'Caltech researchers have made a metallic glass-based foam that is stronger than traditional metal alloys, providing industry with a revolutionary lightweight material.' Currently the applications envisioned for metallic foams are in automobile and aircraft crumple zones, which absorb the impact of collisions, and in artificial bone. Some imagine using the foam to create structures in space."
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New Metal That's Full of Holes More

New Metal That's Full of Holes

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  • Ouch... (Score:4, Funny)

    by EABird ( 554070 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @10:56AM (#6985705)
    Aircraft crumple zones....

    That can't be good

  • bubbloy? (Score:3, Funny)

    by jguevin ( 453329 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @10:57AM (#6985717)
    At first I thought the "dept." was unnecessarily pessimistic, but the name "bubbloy" alone is enough to doom this stuff.

  • Bah. Eat your own dogfood, guys - when over 50% of the buildings on the Caltech campus are made of this newfangled 'foametal', then I'll listen to your spiel... :-P

  • One Step . . . (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dausha ( 546002 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @11:00AM (#6985740) Homepage
    So, we are one step closer to transparent aluminum, aren't we?
  • So when can i use this to build my own free-form foam-igloo?

  • foam steel (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dpilot ( 134227 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @11:07AM (#6985809) Homepage Journal
    In my high school years, (early 70s) my dream was to set up an orbiting factory making foam steel, flat (radial gradient density glass) lenses, and hollow ball bearings. Of course bubbloy apparently doesn't need to be manufactured in zero G, and my (or anyone else's) factory isn't up there.

    IIWIC, (If I Were In Charge) I'd declare a tax holiday on 50+ mile content in order to promote greater space access. I might exclude satellite communications relays, since that industry is already well developed and I'm trying to foster new development. OTOH maybe not, since more development opportunities might arise.

  • Not as cool as Aerogel (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tom7 ( 102298 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @11:09AM (#6985831) Homepage Journal
    Aerogel [nasa.gov] is 99.8% holes. Check out the photos of a thin sheet insulating crayons from a blowtorch!
    • That stuff looks like urinal cakes...

      mmmm, urinal cake.


    • Where can I get some of that stuff, that is so awesome. I wonder how hard or expensive it is to make.
      • An early adult dream, as opposed to the late childhood dream of an orbiting factory, was to build a woodstove lined with shuttle tiles. The idea was to preheat incoming air and burn with very little heat loss other than deliberate extraction. That would allow the firebox to stay at the right temperature for clean burning, even at low burn rates.

        Anyway, shuttle tiles aren't cheap, and it isn't just because they're on the shuttle built to government specifications. Shuttle tile material is expensive to fabri
        • Everything can be cheap as hell as long as it is manufactured in large enough quantitites.

          IC's are not easy things to produce but they are cheap enough to put in anything, including 50p digital watches.

          The shuttle tiles aren't cheap because they are not manufactured in a line, in huge quantities. Once you start producing in those quantities, you tend to solve any problem you encounter. Soon enough the initial cost is so low compared to the quantities you manufacture, the total cost of an individual product

          • Sure, volume manufacturing would make shuttle tile material cheaper, but it's a question of whether it's worth doing. For most earthbound applications, weight doesn't matter much, and size/volume may not be *that* important. So what if firebrick has to be five times thicker, twenty times heavier, and still doesn't do as good a job. It's a wood stove. (or blast furnace, or kiln, or whatever) Even in volume manufacturing, I doubt shuttle tiles would approach firebrick closely enough to be worth it.

            Much as I

          • Total material cost of a typical car is 50 pounds for the metal, 200 pounds for the energy spent. The average cost of a new car in England is around 10k pounds.

            It's all about market drive.

            50 UK pounds ~ $125 AUD. Steel (coil) costs around $1/kilogram in bulk. A 1250kg car is about 50% steel/iron, so you're at around $625, or 250 UK pounds already. Give or take. :)

            Then you need to add the glass, aluminium, plastic, copper, brass, and everything else.

            The last line seems to infer that the cost of a c

            • I have 1250kg of Nissan Bluebird rusting in front of the house. The engine is running, it is 1987 make. I can't find anyone offering anything, even if the price is down to 25 pounds.

              I really wonder from where you get your numbers, the last time I looked at it, it was much cheaper (circa 1994), even with the inflation taken into account.

              Now I have a even bigger mass of Volvo 940. :) Still I paid a lot less than what you offer.

        • Re:Not as cool as Aerogel (Score:3, Informative)

          by Zerth ( 26112 )
          Well, it's made out of silica, so silicosis is a bit of an issue, but it rarely makes it to your lungs because most forms of aerogel suck up liquid like, well, a sponge and any particles the right size to shred lung usually sucks up enough water to keep it from floating into your lungs.

          Ingestionwise, I don't know offhand of anyone who's had a problem with it, other than maybe making them thirsty.
      • Apparently you have to make it in space (!!) if you want it to be fully transparent.
    • Aerogel is 99.8% holes.

      A cool geeky name for the ultimate geeky girl.

    • Re:Not as cool as Aerogel (Score:5, Informative)

      by snake_dad ( 311844 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @02:47PM (#6987825) Homepage Journal
      For those that only looked at the pretty pictures: Aerogel is used in the Stardust [nasa.gov] spacecraft, that is at this very moment collecting spacedust. On january 2nd 2004 it will fly past the comet Wild-2, and collect particles from the comet. And in 2006 the spacecraft will return to earth to bring back the samples.

      And this is only one of the spectacular things that NASA is doing next year. There is also the Mars rovers mission, Cassini-Huyghens will arive at Saturn, and (hopefully) the Shuttle will fly again..

      • And this is only one of the spectacular things that NASA is doing next year.

        The problem is that it usually takes NASA multiple years to do what they plan for a year... (and cost overruns are even worse -- was it a hundred times more expensive/pound to orbit than NASA promised?) :-(

        (And even worse than the shuttle -- the space station.)

        What space research needs are for some of the private initiatives to get funded, so the launch costs get down to the level NASA promised for the Shuttle. Then unive

  • Metal that's full of holes? (Score:5, Funny)

    by vasqzr ( 619165 ) <vasqzr@noSpaM.netscape.net> on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @11:10AM (#6985835)

    Nobody told me Microsoft opened a steel mill?

  • Robin says: (Score:2, Funny)

    by Shiblon ( 25972 )

    "Holy rusted metal, Batman!"

    Never was it more appropriate.

  • Liquidmetal?!?! Awesome! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MarkGriz ( 520778 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @11:32AM (#6986035)
    Indeed, bubbloy will be part of the product line of Liquidmetal Technologies, which is famous for adding spring to golf clubs and tennis rackets, but also develops material
    • (oops...screwed up the post...stupid enter key)

      From the Wired article:

      "Indeed, bubbloy will be part of the product line of Liquidmetal Technologies, which is famous for adding spring to golf clubs and tennis rackets, but also develops material"

      So, when can we expect to see the T-1000 added to their product line?
  • its transparent aluminum
  • Does this compare to Transparent Aluminium [slashdot.org]?

  • Name for the metal (Score:5, Funny)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @12:43PM (#6986670) Homepage
    Researchers are debating over the name for this new metal. Currently, the top two contenders are "Mithril" and "Adamantium" :-)

  • I, for one... (Score:4, Funny)

    by mraymer ( 516227 ) <mraymer&centurytel,net> on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @01:08PM (#6986917) Homepage Journal
    ...welcome our repetitive "can this be used to make a space elevator?" posts.

  • where'd the idea come from? (Score:3, Funny)

    by MSG ( 12810 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @01:08PM (#6986918)
    Does this mean that scientists are starting to understand the materials they collected at Roswell?

  • Artificial bones? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Enrico Pulatzo ( 536675 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @01:16PM (#6986979)
    Keep that crap away from me, bub.

  • He had a mind... (Score:5, Funny)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @01:36PM (#6987160) Homepage Journal
    ...like a steel sponge.

    (source: the hilarious "Use Bizarre Metaphors" idea at the Halfbakery [halfbakery.com])

  • Reason #984 not to trust a Slashdot editor's blurb (Score:5, Informative)

    by The_Laughing_God ( 253693 ) on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @02:17PM (#6987502)
    The blurb Timothy posted (or approved and passed on) said: "Currently the applications envisioned for metallic foams are in automobile and aircraft crumple zones, which absorb the impact of collisions..."

    This sentence is taken from the article, but refers to the old-style metal foams, which have been tested for decades, NOT the 'glassy' metal foam discussed in the article. Most of the article explains why the new glassy foam is different from the old ones, and lists properties, like rigidity and high elastic energy return, which make it specifically unsuited for use in crumple zones. The article itself says:

    "Given the bounce bubbloy would have off a wall or tree, Veazey said it might not be suitable by itself as a crumple zone."

    Hitting a wall and bouncing creates up to twice the change in momentum, and potential for damage to humans, as a 'hit and stick impact' (e.g. wrapping your car around a tree or hitting the concrete after a 100 story fall). The impact would admittedly be mitigated by being spread out over several milliseconds vs. nearly instanteous, but "high elastic energy RETURN" is the opposite of an "energy ABSORBING crumple zone".

    Similarly, a high rigidity, high energy return, bone replacement would place an extreme stress on its anchors and surrounding real bone. You want a material that absorbs energy as it flexes, rather than returning is as a one-two punch (initial impact and then sharp recoil in the opposite direction) The energy absorbed by the flexing of a good bone substitute should be released as heat (it takes a lot of kinetic energy to make rather little heat) instead of crumpling [mechanical deformation] like a Mercedes front end.

    This glassy metallic foam has many potentially interesting applications. It's a shame that the blurb picked up on two applications where the old foams look more promising than the topic of the article
    • Actually, a high energy return substance, with the proper delay/dampers, would still protect the passengers of the vehicle, but not be so forgiving of those that (presumably) struck the vehicle.

      For instance, if someone runs a red light in front of me, I don't particularly care what happens to him (he endangered me, after all, as opposed to the other way around) As long as Im' still protected, I'm quite happy to see my property not self destruct to protect the one who is in the wrong.
    • Soooo, what you're saying is the editors don't read the stories? And because of the constant dupes, apparently they don't read slashdot either. So we can logically conclude that the process of "editing" must therefore amount to randomly clicking "accept" and "reject" links, and looking busy.

  • Did anyone else read this and "hear" ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dave21212 ( 256924 ) <dav@spamcop.net> on Wednesday September 17, 2003 @02:55PM (#6987880) Homepage Journal

    Did anyone else read this and "hear" the name of this material as
    BUBBLE BOY [tvtome.com] ???

    (Episode 47): Jerry is spotted at a restaurant and asked to visit a boy who lives inside a plastic bubble. Jerry, Elaine, George, and his girlfriend, Susan, are supposed to spend the weekend at Susan's father's cabin. Since the cabin is near the boy's home, Jerry agrees to stop by. Arriving early, George quarrels with the bubbleboy while playing Trivia Pursuit, almost killing him. Kramer and Jerry's girlfriend go swimming near the cabin while they wait for the others. He leaves a cigar burning that sets the cabin on fire. Air Date: 10/7/92

    I guess I spend too much time playing with this stuff... [slashdot.org]
  • I thought this was a story about the PowerMac G5... I guess I need some more caffeine...
  • I see some people have been seeing too much of that star trek movie where they go back in time, that one was actually cool (coming from a non trekkie fan) "well, DUMBASS on you, too!" anyways, this sounds OK, but, that aerogel stuff looks better and more feasible for heat related situations, wouldnt the bubbles on this "bubbloy" help heat the metal faster and make it melt? I'd like to see that aerogel stuff used in computers, or hand in hand with bubbloy, and if it can be made cheap, then maybe we can pre

  • Closed cell foam in a vacuum (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PhilHibbs ( 4537 ) <snarks@gmail.com> on Thursday September 18, 2003 @05:21AM (#6992630) Journal
    With a closed-cell foam, I'd imagine that air pressue becomes relevant. If the cells are full of air, what would exposing it to vacuum do? Likewise, if it's manufactured in a vacuum, would the cells be empty, or would they contain gasses that are a by-product of the manufacturing process? "Make it in the medium that it is to be used" is an obvious answer, but what if it's used to make the walls of a space structure? The outer cells would be exposed to vacuum, the inner cells to atmospheric pressure.

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