Ultralight, Ultrastiff 3D-Printed Material Can Hold Over 150,000 Times Its Own Weight
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and MIT researchers have created a material with the same weight and density as aerogel - a material so light it's called 'frozen smoke' - but with 10,000 times more stiffness. This material, which they developed using additive micro-manufacturing processes, could have a huge impact on the aerospace and automotive industries. "These lightweight materials can withstand a load of at least 160,000 times their own weight," says LLNL engineer Xiaoyu Zheng. "The key to this ultrahigh stiffness is that all the micro-structural elements in this material are designed to be over constrained and do not bend under applied load." The additive micro-manufacturing process involves using a micro-mirror display chip to create high-fidelity 3D parts one layer at a time from photosensitive feedstock materials. It allows the team to rapidly generate materials with complex 3D micro-scale geometries that are otherwise challenging or in some cases, impossible to fabricate.
Transcript
00:00:03 inside science TV it's one of the lightest man-made materials in the world but how can something this light hold 160,000 times its own weight they might not look like much but these 3D materials are oneof a kind lightweight but super strong it can hold more than 100,000 times of its own weight in fact even more than that material engineers at the Lawrence
00:00:27 Livermore National Laboratory created them with a special 3D printer that mixes hard metal tough Ceramics and flexible Plastics one of the benefits of this methodology is the ability to work with a wide range of materials these are things that aren't generally available in 3D printing today the engineers create the materials with a sophisticated technology that creates 3D
00:00:47 Parts layer by layer it starts here with a light source light comes up through this tube into this Cube which is a beam splitter comes over here and on the end of this ribbon cable it's essentially a mini uh monitor or screen that's reflective we put an image on that screen which represents a layer in our three-dimensional structure the light hits the screen and reflects off of it
00:01:10 over to these Optical components and it focuses it in this box where we have a liquid wherever it gets hit by light it hardens and forms a layer we then lower that layer liquid reflows over the top change the image on the screen and shoot our next layer the materials are so strong that they can stay stiff almost indefinitely and can hold up to at least 160,000 times their own weight their
00:01:34 connectivity is so high that the structure does not have extra degree of freedom to move this super stiff material could someday be used in products that require strong but lightweight Parts such as automobiles space vehicles and airplanes things like aircraft become much more efficient they'd be lighter weight You' need less fuel a new way to create materials that
00:01:56 could change how we travel this is inside science TV inside science TV if you enjoyed this Edition follow us on the web and social media powered by the American Institute of physics and a coalition of Underwriters