DoE Develops Flexible Glass Stronger Than Steel

An anonymous reader writes "The Department of Energy Office of Science recently collaborated with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology to develop a resilient yet malleable new type of glass that is stronger than steel. The material can also be molded, and it bends when subjected to stress instead of shattering. The glass is actually a microalloy and features metallic elements such as palladium. This metal has a high 'bulk-to-shear' stiffness ratio that counteracts the intrinsic brittleness of glassy materials. The team that developed the material believes that by changing various ratios, they could make it even stronger."

Scottie's here!

[wcrowe]

Awesome!

They only needed the aluminim transparent...

[starglider29a]

...for the cameras. The whales wouldn't care. They spend lots of time in the dark. And besides, which would make you feel better? magically appearing in a black void? Or looking out and seeing the insides of a Bird of Prey?

Remember Aerogel?

[snsh]

Twenty years ago, we though NASA's aerogel was going to be everywhere today. It promised the light-transmission and strength of regular glass, while being literally light as a feather and the best thermal insulator known to man. It seemed like eventually you could build entire houses out of this stuff.

Today, aerogel is nowhere to be found as a structural material, probably because it's so expensive. They do put pulverized aerogel into shoe insoles as insulation for mountain climbing, and you can buy a gumball-sized chunk of aerogel on eBay for USD$20 or so. I still wonder why nobody ever managed to get the cost down.

Re:Remember Aerogel?

[vlm]

Twenty years ago, we though NASA's aerogel was going to be everywhere today. It promised the light-transmission and strength of regular glass, while being literally light as a feather and the best thermal insulator known to man. It seemed like eventually you could build entire houses out of this stuff.

First of all its a general class of materials, its a gel (think jello) with the bulk substrate removed (think dehydrated jello). So its like talking about making stuff out of "metal" as opposed to "SAE 316L certified steel".

The second thing is its been around in some form or another for about 80 years now, not 20.

The third thing is all the manufacturing processes (as far as I know) involve replacing the substrate with supercritical solvent and venting out the solvent. Which, given typical supercritical vapor pressures, usually means the manufacturing plant occasionally blows up. An easy thing to remember is supercritical CO2 needs equipment built to a hundred bar. The actual number is closer to 70, but whatever, "a hundred" is easier to remember...

Standard slashdot car analogy, your car tires run about 2 bar, and mechanics at tire shops regularly get killed when they're inflated and they blow apart, tire cages or not. So to make an aerogel the size of a car tire, you need to inflate / deflate a tank running about 50 or so times the pressure. Your average greasemonkey would probably not retire with a pension from an aerogel factory.

I believe the sweeds blew a factory completely up in the 80s. Pressure vessel failures are such a PITA.

Also the process is inherently batch. Every modern industry relies on constant process, from steel to ipod assembly lines. Not gonna have widespread aerogel until someone figures out a continuous flow process.

palladium?

[Charliemopps]

palladium? Part of the platinum group, and the reason catalytic converters cost so much money? The mining of palladium is so toxic that the primary site that it's mine at, Norilsk Russia is considered to be one of the most polluted places on earth.

http://www.aboutinteresting.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/norilsk-russia.jpg

Good one guys.

It means very little, actually

[fnj]

"Strong as" or "stronger than" steel is a popular and meaningless phrase. Various grades of steel are all over the place in terms of strength.

In terms of yield strength, annealed 1118 is 41 ksi. "High strength" steel used in submarine hulls is around 80 ksi. Annealed 4340 is 69 ksi; normalized, it's 125 ksi, while heat treated, it can be as high as 243 ksi or as low as 124 ksi, depending on the degree of treatment. You can see why 4130 and 4340 tubes have been used in aircraft structures as long ago as the 1920's or before, and are also good for automobile engine connecting rods. They are also cheap, readily available, and not only made by gnomes in Sweden. Ordinary steel piano wire has a tensile strength over 300 ksi.

Thus, a particular grade of, for example, high strength precipitation hardening aluminum alloy, say 7075-T6, with a yield strength of 73 ksi, is stronger than some steels and decidedly less strong than other steels.

Strength alone is never the only consideration in practical terms. Ductility and toughness are also important.