A new technique has been used to turn ordinary metals into “metallic wood” with a greatly improved strength-to-weight ratio. By manipulating materials at the atomic scale, scientists from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and the University of Cambridge claim to have created a sheet of nickel that is as strong as titanium, but up to five times lighter.

Strong as steel is a cliché, but it’s one that’s true. Steel is so strong and so affordable that it’s hard for the average person to go through their day without seeing tons of it in the form of bridges, vehicles, building supports, and reinforced concrete, just to name a very few examples.

However, steel and other metals that we use on an everyday basis aren’t anywhere near as strong as they could be. The crystalline structure that make up metals like steel, aluminum, and titanium give them their strength and flexibility, but this structure is imperfect, so the forces applied to the metals under stress cause the atoms in them to slip and the structure to fail far below the metal’s theoretical strength limit. Titanium, for example, would be 10 times stronger if it had an ideal structure.

One way to overcome this can be found in ordinary wood. Pure cellulose, which is a major element in wood, is a mushy pulp, but when it’s formed into the complex structure of timber, it becomes so strong that wood and commercial steel, weight for weight, have comparable strength. The reason why steel seems so much stronger is that it’s much denser.

Led by James Pikul, Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at Penn Engineering, the new study looked at new ways to take metal and give it the porous structure that gives wood its strength.

Keep reading on New Atlas

 

---

Watch the video and learn more about Construction Links Network – the peer-to-peer network sharing platform for the construction, building and design community.

Ideal for YOUR Press Releases | Project Updates | New Appointments | Awards & Milestones | Company News | New Products/Services | Brochures | Videos | Infographics | Blog Sharing | Events and More