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5 times stronger than steel.

Posted: Tue 10 Jan, 2006 12:39 am
by Chappy
TEL AVIV — An Israeli firm has developed armor based on nanotechnology.

ApNano has tested armor said to be five times stronger than steel and twice as strong as any impact-resistant material used in protective gear.

Last year, a sample of the ApNano material was subjected to tests in which a steel projectile traveling at a speed of up to 1.5 kilometers per second slammed into the material.

Executives said the impact was the equivalent to dropping four diesel locomotives onto an area the size of a human fingernail.

They said the nano-based armor, which stemmed from a new carbon form called Inorganic Fullerenes, withstood the impact.

The company's chief executive officer, Menachem Genut, said the company would launch initial production within the next six months. Genut said this would mean the production of between 100 and 200 kilograms of the nano-material per day.

By 2007, Genut said, ApNano, based in Nes Ziona, Israel, would begin full-scale production of the armor. This would mean the production of several tons per day.

The company began development of the nano-material in 2004.

Genut said the nano-material would require additional field testing before it was ready for the market. He said the first product could be ready by 2009.

Posted: Tue 10 Jan, 2006 10:44 am
by Gary_amsterdam
interesting, in a way sad because then they will have to make better weapons too :)

Posted: Tue 10 Jan, 2006 12:34 pm
by Tab
They say it will with stand the weight of four locomotives hitting it, well if it does not penetrate the amour the kinetic energy must do a hell of a lot of damage

Posted: Tue 10 Jan, 2006 4:01 pm
by anglo-saxon
Also read in Sunday's Calgary Herald that the Brits are developing armour with an electronic forcefield, said to blow any charge before it touches the armour. Vehicles could subsequently become far lighter than conventionally-armoured tanks, effectively giving a new lease of life to the tank which is (according to many) becoming obsolete on the modern battlefield. I'd sure hate to have a power cut in the middle of a firefight, though. "I say, Binkie, did you bring the spare batteries, old bean?"

"D'oh!"

Posted: Tue 10 Jan, 2006 8:16 pm
by Ruth
My chemistry may be irreparably rusty, but how can you have a form of carbon described as "inorganic"? I know that fullerenes are recently discovered form but the whole organic/inorganic divide is surely if there is carbon present or not?

"They say it will with stand the weight of four locomotives hitting it, well if it does not penetrate the amour the kinetic energy must do a hell of a lot of damage"

I'll bet. I once saw a guy who came off his board when waterskiing. Had on a professional wetsuit, not a scratch on it, but by God was he broken up inside it. Really sad, he was only 20.

Posted: Wed 11 Jan, 2006 9:40 am
by harry hackedoff
Fullerenes have been around for ages. Discovered by a reet fat bastard called Buckminster Fuller(I shit you not 8) ) they are a form of carbon with various extra electrons from the usual form, which has twelve I think.
The molecule has up to sixty extra electrons and they can stack together with much smaller spaces between them. This makes them very dense and new uses for this material are continually being developed (Don`t start on me, this is all from memory. :roll: ) Fuller christened them "Bucky-balls" but for some reason that name didn`t stick :-?
What the Israelites have probably done is to make a "paste" with the fullerenes and apply that to a kevlar vest. The balls can separate easily when pushed slowly but the "lock"together if moved quickly. The k.e. would be absorbed over the whole vest. Summat similar has been trialled by Elmer, but using nano glass beads :wink:

Ruth can I have an excused boots chit please?

Posted: Wed 11 Jan, 2006 10:31 am
by Ruth
Any time, Harry! Just leave the gin in the usual place. :wink:

Sorry, by "recent" I meant "last 20 years". That would make sense using the structure as a coating (I know the fancy wetsuit was some kind of carbon fibre).
I was just confused as how things could be inorganic but carbon, but found something on the BBC website about a form of molybdenum that they're working on, so maybe that's part of it.

Posted: Wed 11 Jan, 2006 11:30 am
by proffered
I met Prof. Sir Harry Kroto (who won the Nobel prize along with his team for discovering buckminster fullerene) a few years ago at Manchester University - he was accepting a Dalton medal, and giving a speech.
He spoke of the applications of fullerenes, esp. Buckyballs, but never once did he mention them being used in a macroscopic way, certainly not with respect to their strength. Pretty impressive to see how the applications of C60 and the like have changed now they can be manufactured in larger quantities.

Ruth - I think its inorganic because they are only found naturally in space, on the border of our atmosphere, and thus can't be created or used by our 'tradtional' organisms.

Harry - Kroto and the team named their find after (Richard) Buckminster Fuller, as he was the discoverer of the geodesic dome amongst others, and C60 looks like such a dome (proves I was paying attention). Got to wonder though, with a normal name like Richard, who would choose to go by Bucky?
It will be interesting to see how the vest is received by the international community.

Adrian

Posted: Wed 11 Jan, 2006 1:30 pm
by harry hackedoff
C60 is one "version" but there are a few more than that. Didn`t Fuller predict the geodesic shape of the molecule before the substance had actually been made? Geodesic design has been around a lot longer than old Bucky. Wellington bombers for instance, and the "yurt" used by Tibetan nomads is a geodesic structure whose design is thousands of years old. C60 is a sphere because the bonds make pentagonal and hexagonal shapes and when they link up it makes a football shape, a la FIFA
This is turning into Chemistry Corner,ffs :roll: Someone will no doubt be googling their arse off to give us chapter and verse on fullerenes but I`ve just hit the threshold of boredom on this one 8)
Artist was bored when he read...... :roll:
TEL AVIV — An Israeli firm has developed armor based on nanotechnology

Posted: Thu 12 Jan, 2006 10:23 am
by flighty
Betcha didn't know Buckyball was named 'Molecule of the Year' in 1991. :drinking: