A new lightweight and very strong metal
Engineers have developed a new superlight and very strong metal.
A team led by researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has created a super-strong yet light structural metal with extremely high specific strength and modulus, or stiffness-to-weight ratio. The new metal is composed of magnesium infused with a dense and even dispersal of ceramic silicon carbide nanoparticles. It could be used to make lighter airplanes, spacecraft, and cars, helping to improve fuel efficiency, as well as in mobile electronics and biomedical devices.
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Engineers have developed a new superlight and very strong metal.
A team led by researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has created a super-strong yet light structural metal with extremely high specific strength and modulus, or stiffness-to-weight ratio. The new metal is composed of magnesium infused with a dense and even dispersal of ceramic silicon carbide nanoparticles. It could be used to make lighter airplanes, spacecraft, and cars, helping to improve fuel efficiency, as well as in mobile electronics and biomedical devices.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Very nice timing, when combined with finding Magnesium Sulfate in the Cerean salt deposits!
If we also find Lithium in those salts, then we might make the recent Magnesium Lithium alloy, with a density of 1.44g/cc. We might find this is a useful combination with this SiC reinforcement. I don’t know if the Zinc in their alloy was crucial, or just the use of a normal magnesium alloy to begin the work with.
Add these developments to the nano-architectured trusses that are being developed at CalTech, Los Alamos, and several other labs, and the mass of space-built structures of the future may have just taken another steep nose dive, to our great benefit!
Interesting article but gives no details about how much improvement was made or difficult the process was to achieve. Also makes no mention of whether this process can be scaled up from the laboratory to a more industrial size.
Reardon Metal, perhaps. Everything else in the book seems to be happening, why not that?
Heh.
The ministry of science would never allow for it, until of course the stole its patent.
It not really a new metal. Just a new form of an old metal.
Just like concrete with foam particles in it to make it lighter.
In this case they are infusing ceramic silicon carbide nanoparticles into it.
And what would carbide particles do to cutting tools? Cut the tool faster than the tool cuts this new metal.
I machine ceramic material everyday. It destroys tool bits. I get about 5% of the tool life cutting ceramic vs aluminum. And even then I have to watch that tool bit very carefully. I get about 3 inches of penetration out of a carbide drill bit before its totally dull and rounded over.
I am still waiting for Transparent Aluminum…….
Steve said: “I am still waiting for Transparent Aluminum…….”
It already exists. They have used it as the nose cones for heat seeking missiles like the sidewinder for decades. Its very hard so it resists scratching when hit by sand particles during take offs and landings. Technically its a single crystal of aluminum oxide. Different impurities give the crystals different colors and they are more commonly known as gemstones such as sapphire, ruby, topaz, etc..
My son pointed out that a problem with a magnesium alloy is the reactivity. They try to avoid it in satellite construction. Kind of the same reason they don’t sell replacements for the mag wheels on my 57′ Chevy. If a rim ever hits the pavement and ignites, hot rod becomes a literal description!
They also avoid Zinc and Cadmium fasteners when thermal vacuum testing because of the electrically conductive outgassing.
Thanks for that info Peter, I had no idea…..
It’s even bulletproof (or as we in the field prefer “bullet-resistant” LOL)
“…As a transparent armor material, it provides a bulletproof product with far less weight and thickness than traditional bulletproof glass. It has been dubbed Transparent aluminum (per Star Trek).[10] 1.6″ thick ALON armor is capable of stopping .50 BMG armor-piercing rounds, which can penetrate 3.7″ of traditional glass laminate.[11]…”
This is an interesting technology. Perhaps, instead of magnesium, metals such as tin and silicon offer interesting advantages. For example, tin with silicon carbide nanoparticles could be super-solder. It could be used instead of brazing, perhaps. Silicon with silicon carbide nanoparticles could be a better semi-conductor, perhaps. It could improve solar cells by overcoming the brittle crystal-like property of silicon. Silicon with silicon-carbide nanoparticles might make its amorphous properties better, so that it can compete with crystalline silicon solar cells. Use of sheets of the material instead of vapor-deposition could make the material useful instead of crystal silicon.