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So the project I am part of deals
with fabric.We came up with this idea that
we could knit our way into
all kinds of structures like bicycles, hoods for cars,
parts of airplanes etc. The textile aspect of the composite
that's quite unique that's one of the
avenues that we're pursuing. How does that then
play out into making a composite. The knit provides a lot more flexibility
which is very different from a weave because you can have the one area that
super rigid that needs to be rigid and then you can have another area which is
much more flexible because it needs to be flexible.
One important property of composites is toughness. If you've seen
these Indy 500 racers, Formula One racers you've seen
cars crashing at ,you know, really
high speeds but then you see the driver just walking away,
The reason is that when these things break
they break rather gracefully they absorb a lot of energies. It's sort of diffusely
cracking.
It beats most metals very easily.
Muffled voice: Alright time to start it up!
Sounds of air compressor
Despite the fact that we look like a strange kind of
team and this is not the typical thing that get funded
MCubed funding allows us to demonstrate that this
actually has legs. MCubed is an initiative
at the University of Michigan that tries too help
faculty at the University to identify collaborators
to nurture a research project that span multiple departments.
MCubed allowed us to make the hypothesis and give us the time
to research its usefulness and its application. I mean honestly
we've certainly learned a lot about
what has been done, what hasn't been done, what direction we should head in.
There are already carbon fiber reinforced composites
and other braided textile composites that are used for
structural forms but they tend to be labor intensive.
With knitted and certain types are braids and woven materials
you can produce the backbone very quickly. If you can also infuse it very
quickly, which can be done,
you can produce very intricate
structural forms rigidly for actual load-bearing
purposes and then you can do it rather cost effectively.
There's no waste, there's no cutting, there's no sewing the thing which is actually a
fully three-dimensional structure
can be produced directly off the machine. We're getting
several desirable effects using one material:
light weight, producability and the fact that
they are highly damage tolerant and very crash worthy.
I think it's a matter of time before people realized that this is the
material of choice
in the near future.