Slashdot Mirror
Bomb-Proof Wallpaper Developed
MikeChino writes "Working in partnership with the US Army Corp of Engineers, Berry Plastics has rolled out a new breed of bomb-proof wallpaper. Dubbed the X-Flex Blast Protection System, the wallpaper is so effective that a single layer can keep a wrecking ball from smashing through a brick wall, and a double layer can stop blunt objects (i.e. a flying 2×4) from knocking down drywall. According to its designers, covering an entire room takes less than an hour."
But will it blend?
Why is this considered idle? It seems like very promising and useful technology.
i think i need underpants made out of this stuff.
Might reduce the BSOD freq.
It looks like it's just self-stick Kevlar. So it's going to be hideously expensive. However, maybe the Army overpaying for it will help them find advanced production methods to cut costs and benefit us in the long run. But then what? Possible uses: line car gas/hydrogen tanks with it. But aside from that and protecting masonry walls from disintegrating in an explosion, I can't see any practical use. As a commenter on the article site said, what if this is a load bearing wall? Looks like it would just fold up and take the building with it. Great, no shrapnel, I get it. But as cool a future would be where every building is bomb proof, I don't see it happening before a nanotech alternative that's self-healing and much better at linear support.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
If this can stop projectiles from penetrating the wall, then think about the protection it could offer from tornados and hurricanes. Obviously not a direct hit, since there'd be far more structural damage, but how much of that damage caused by flying debris could be mitigated. At the very least, the protection it could offer for occupants.
Well, it certainly looks interesting, but in the video the wallpaper was anchored very securely at the top and bottom of the test wall. I'd like to see how it does with only the sticky backing of the product itself keeping it on the wall.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
I just have to love any product that will require a whole new type of work for the demolitions industry - wallpaper remover! Would the job title be Interior Undecorator, or Interior Dedecorator?
Rhino liner works great
I'm going to use this as wallpaper for my desktop. Does that now make my computer bomb-proof?
1. There was no pressure (other than gravity) being exerted down on the wall. So yeah, the wall is going to buckle but not fall when a semi-strong cohesive surface is covering the entire back side. 2. They should have tested it against normal wallpaper (or cloth for that matter), not just NO wallpaper.
Makes me think of proof glass or wardable paint from http://www.amazon.com/Sunshine-Robin-McKinley/dp/0425191788 I guess truth really is at least as strange as fiction.
What will happen if the bomb is inside the building with this wallpaper? Where would the explosion go?
Maybe in the next movie, Superman (or "LL") could put in an order for condoms made out of this material. After all, it would certainly solve a lot of problems.
Never confuse movement with action. --Hemingway
... you don't have to punch through a wall to otherwise destroy it. Even if this stuff stops a wrecking ball from breaking through a brick wall, can you imagine what kind of a shattered mess it will be in after force of the impact? It will still have be rebuilt from the ground up. The video in TFA demonstrates that: if that block wall had been a load-bearing wall, whatever big weight it was supporting would probably still come crashing down.
Looking at the video it looks like the "wallpaper" was supported at the top and the bottom by the rig used to hold the wall (and "wallpaper") in place. Making the "wallpaper" act more like a safety net catching a falling object than something reinforcing the wall itself.
How well does it work when it's a wall bearing load instead of the rig bearing the load of the "wallpaper" and the impact?
How can a wallpaper displaying 3 bombs help against anything?
Is it like the red ribbon, if I use this wallpaper I give money to peace soldiers or something?
And is it available in a 1680x1050 resolution?
This stuff needs to be put in the walls of the homes out in hurricane alley. Tactical considerations are nice of course, but in your day-to-day those people could probably use it more. Especially since every so often 2x4s doing 250+ mph are thrown at their homes.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
As a volunteer firefighter I see this is a horrible idea for being put in use in homes and offices. Im not sure how easily a firefighter will be able to get through the material. If a firefighter becomes lost or disoriented in a building during a fire, one tactic they can use is to find out where the nearest window is and if they can get to it easily. Sometimes they will need to go bust through an interior wall. With this wallpaper I think it would be near impossible to get through the wall which could lead to unnecessary deaths.
The wall does not have a load on it, otherwise I think it would fully collapse afterwards. Requires structural framing to work.
kind of an inside out airbag.
Wonder how a vehicle with this as a tensile skin would crash test? The body would become a safety cocoon.
The wallpaper doesn't let my video projector display Battlefield Earth.
How about embedding kevlar-web in concrete? As a building technique generally. Earthquake resistance?
-kgj
I think it might be better called "bomb resistant". Certainly a big enough bomb would go right through it. They make them into the megaton range these days...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
an unstoppable cannon ball hits and unbreakable wall?
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Now they can start on that 'Bomb Proof' school desk that my parents hear so much about when they were kids.....
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
"Plate's weakness was concussion weapons (e.g., maces) "
I think if you do some research you will find that the overwhelming consensus of historians (and even that is a bit of an understatement) agree that it was the longbow that made plate armor obsolete.
I'm just sayin'... you can look it up yourself.
No I agree. Longbows made armoured knights obsolete.
The Battle of Agincourt showed how effective longbows were vs plate.
But in hand-to-hand combat, plate's weakness was a concussion weapon.
And my original point in posting was that felt plus chain was sufficient to protect against most arrows.
Sorry I came in in the middle of the argument.
and every foot-soldier wore a vest of thick felt and a coat of mail so dense and strong that our arrows made no impression on them. They shot at us with their great arbalists, wounding the Moslem horses and their riders. I saw some with from one to ten arrows sticking in them, and still advancing at their ordinary pace without leaving the ranks.
"But in hand-to-hand combat, plate's weakness was a concussion weapon."
That's one of those "Yes, but..." things. It has to be taken in context. Yes, plate armor was vulnerable to "denting" weapons. If your armor was crushed around you, you could be disabled even if you were not particularly injured.
But that has to be compared to the protection that mail armor offered against crushing weapons... which was virtually none. Your armor would not be crushed around you, you would just be crushed instead. So plate armor was still far superior in that sense.
A chain's only as strong as it's weakest link. So if this stuff is glued to the walls with anything less strong than it is, that adhesive will become the problem: not the bombproof wallpaper. Presumably "wallpaper" is the wrong term, too as this stuff would have to coat the floor and ceiling (and doors & windows) to be completely effective. Then what would you do if you lost your keys? Move house?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
If it keeps wrecking balls out, then, it can probably keep wrecking balls in. Hmmmmm
Using a wrecking ball wrapped in the stuff.
Design the building so the roof is supported by only interior walls and so there are multiple load points, and you have a much better chance of it staying up.
High school chemistry labs? perhaps Hollywood can find a way to wrap their movies in it? Thank you! I'll be here all week! Try the adolescent bovine!
Right. And historians have never been wrong about medieval weaponry.
I mean. This is why swords were *commonly thought* to weigh 40 pounds. No, I'm not kidding. Unless they were experts on the matter (And by that, I mean, has read fecthbucher and first hand accounts, which do still exist and bear me out), I'd be just as willing to call BS on them.
Gaaaah, I covered the damn battle of Agincourt. Archery wasn't the main killing force in that fight. It was the field, that they rushed through despite it being a horrible situation and totally in favor of the English. Sure, archery killed, but it was more exhaustion and stupidity.
Also: The best way to defeat a well armored foe was not an impact weapon - felt and padding under the maille and plate stopped most of the damage - but stuff like http://www.crazywolffarms.com/images/pollaxe_1_.jpg that bad boy. Polearms and short weapons. If you get a knight off his horse and stun him long enough to shove a dagger through his eyes, he's fucked.
Also, really, as I said before... plate was invented after longbows. I mean. Really. Let that sink in. Longbow: ~1250AD. Plate? 1300s. Plate was the response to longbows in the arms race. Gaaaah.
If you've seen the damage the average dorm-rat causes, you'd understand why I say it would be just the thing for the dorms. ;P
(Both College and Military)
Esp in areas like Sderot which has been subjected to years of rocket fire from Gaza. I'm sure making houses more bomb proof would go over quite well. I live in Israel but not in Sderot, we actually have a bomb shelter in our house, but we use it as a storage closet.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
So why don't we just build the walls out of the same material ?
Well, that's obvious and it was explained all over the internet, several years ago.You have no chance to survive. Make your time.
What I want to know is, if I install this wallpaper in my Windows workstation, would it prevent it from crashing?
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
I think if you do some research you will find that the overwhelming consensus of historians (and even that is a bit of an understatement) agree that it was the longbow that made plate armor obsolete.
I'm just sayin'... you can look it up yourself.
I did:
So, it was gunfire which made plate armor obsolete, not longbows.
The arabs didn't use longbows. Their bows were intended for use from horseback and were relatively weak. There's a account of a Norman knight hit by an arrow from a Welsh longbow, it went through his armour, his leg, the saddle and killed his horse.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Link doesn't work.
Copy/Paste = too much effort.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
All your wallpaper are belong to us.
Yep, according to "Time team" their steel boots got stuck in the mud at Agincourt (like gum boots do), the English ranks were mostly wearing rags as shoes and could move more freely. Longbows were the WMD of the middle ages, especially when you had 10K archers all of whom could fire fast enought to keep 3 arrows in the air at once. Such a volley of arrows flying through the air is said to make a roar that could be heard for miles. As to wether they were effective against armour apparently that depended on what type of metal the amour and arrow heads were made of.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Longbows were around at least 100 years before that. Northallerton, 1138.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Can it withstand the force of a 3 year old with a pair of scissors, a mushy banana, and a sharpie?
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
smashlab anyone ? that show suck, but we did see something like this in that show 2 years ago.
That pattern will be sooo 2012.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Sounds great! Now they just have to figure out how to make all shrapnel blunt and this stuff will actually be worth the money put into it.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Come on guys - it's physics.
This material is great in tension - that's it. If you 'bend' a material, the surface closest the the force goes into compression, and the surface away from the force goes into tension. How do you strengthen a wall? Increase the compressive strength of the surface closest outside, or increase the tensile strength of the surface on the inside. Put this stuff on the inside, smack the outside with a wreaking ball, and whatdoyouknow - the wall stands up.
I'm not saying that this isn't cool, but it's not unique - thinking composite materials here. Laminated glass does this kind of thing easily for example, when using the right kinds of laminates.
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
I think the goal is to keep the wall up long enough for you to get out alive, not to maintain the building up to code in the event of a bomb blast or a tornado tossed automobile. The roof will still fall in, but it may take 5-15 min instead of 5-15 seconds. I live in Tornado Alley and if I buy a home in this area I'd definitely consider buying this for my home to increase my families chance of escape if a tornado hits our home.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
That demonstration is very misleading.
Observe that the material is not actually fastened to the wall, rather is is anchored to the top of the wall and the bottom of the wall (look at the piece of angle iron in the demo)
This angle iron also distributes the force across the material, without it, it would just rip out where it was anchored, such as if just screws were used to attach it. I would bet that that piece of angle iron is pretty well tightened...
If it were truly fastened as wallpaper, then it may prevent the wall from shattering, however the wall would still collapse where the material stopped unless anchored (as in the demo). Hence, instead of pieces of a wall falling on you, the entire wall would just fall on you, probably killing you...
And yes, the rest of the structure would still collapse on you as well.
This is probably an advance, however it probably would require new structural building techniques, as well as additional steel anchors/angle iron for it to be truly effective. Not something joe public could ever afford, but I am sure governments could "find" the money.....
I hope they make a 1600x1200 version.
What if you just bypass drywall and bricks and other "skinning" materials and just put a sheet on each side of a wood frame, then insulate it.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
It is certainly true that this wallpaper would not prevent structural collapse, but just because it does not solve every problem associated with a bomb blast does not mean that it isn't worthwhile! For starters, many of the walls in a given building are NOT load bearing in any way -- they could go away completed and the structure would be fine. Secondly, even load bearing walls will be able to sustain a certain amount of damage before caving completely. Even if this reduced the damage long enough for people to get outside before the building collapsed, we would be saving lives. Thirdly, one of the biggest dangers from a bomb blast comes not from the actual concussive force of the blast but from the huge amounts of shrapnel. This would effectively render the shrapnel a non-issue for the inhabitants of the room. So yes, this is not a perfect solution. If you put this up in a room, a bomb could still kill you. It will, however, drastically increase your odds in most scenarios.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
And you thought the regular stuff was hard to steam off.
Wonder how a vehicle with this as a tensile skin would crash test? The body would become a safety cocoon.
No, it would most likely be a deadly coffin. Crash zones in cars that absorb the impact energy are there for a reason, namely to keep you from decelerating too quickly and thus being harmed.
If it was transparent, maybe it could stop windows from crashing and finally make it a stable operating system.
-1, Wrong rather than +3 Insightful I'm afraid.
Arrows go straight through body armour and chainmail (which is designed for protection against cuts from light swords). Arrows even go through modern bullet-proof jackets worn by police unless it contains a steel or titanium trauma plate in the middle (extremely rare). An arrow is around 20-60 times heavier than a bullet and usually much sharper. The overall energy of an arrow in flight may be less than that of a bullet but it's a better shape for piercing body armour (sharper) and made of a much harder metal than a traditional lead-based bullet, which tends to flatten or break up on impact with soft materials such as the energy dissipating layers of bullet proof vests.
an unstoppable cannon ball hits and unbreakable wall?
You would now have an unbreakable (and possibly unstoppable) wall flying in front of the unstoppable cannon ball.
You didn't think that one through, did you.
So what if it is immovable?
Will it stand against a house full of toddlers?
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
There was a writeup on this stuff in this (last?) month's Popular Science. They posted a video of a wrecking ball hitting brick walls with and without it on their website.
http://www.popsci.com/bown/2009/video/video-bombproof-wallpaper-vs-wrecking-ball
~Warning!~ The above is encrypted using rot676!
Just give me a Bomb Proof house so i can decorate my walls the way i want... Frankly bombproof Wall paper is like giving someone bullet proof pepto-bismal.
"Well sir you see the bullet did not enter your stomach; unfortunately everything around it has been severely damaged. But at-least it worked."
It's not a terrible complicated idea, but at the same time, it's not something that's commonly done, most likely for reasons of cost. If they've managed to find a way to make this cheap enough to install that it could reasonably be considered for the average building, then that'd be something worth talking about.
If it's reasonably cheap, it could find a good bit of commercial use.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Bomb-proof wallpaper is great -- if the bomb goes off outside. If someone sets off a bomb INSIDE, it wll keep the force inside the room. Result? Soldier soup!
Not really likely. You smack the wall with any legitimate force and the glue holding it to the wall shatters or releases, and/or the structure holding the wall up shatters. For normal home construction (plywood frame with shitrock/drywall construction) congratulations, you just "increased the tensile strength" of something I used to use to draw on the sidewalk with.
If they'd used a real wrecking ball, rather than a bowling-ball sized "representation", it would have done very little good. The wall is still severely damaged and in need of serious repair.
Your example of laminated glass is the same way. The best example is a car windshield - get a baseball or a good-sized chunk of rock (gee thanks, asswipes who have to haul a dump-truck full of gravel or concrete rubble on the freeway and ruined my windshield) into your windshield and you may not have it hit you in the face or get a bunch of glass shards all over (which is the goal and is legitimate, same as this wallpaper) but you still have to repair the windshield afterwards.
I noticed that right away. I was looking at the wallpaper bounce away from the wall thinking why didn't the paper just fall off? You can see that it moves away from the wall(adhesive lets go). Sure enough it is secure at both ends. How many people secure their wallpaper at both ends with a metal bar? Thanks for bringing this up. Please mod parent up.
How much of this stuff do the Iranians need to protect their nuclear facilities against the bunker-busting ordnance?
Those "toys" can go through many feet of reinforced concrete — maybe, that material will now go the way of the CRT-monitors?..
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Yes, but you can oput it up quickly and in mass quantity, and there aren'[t a lot of material this flexable. that you can do this with.
You also need to increase the tensilt strenth enough to compensate for a blast, several times. While the prinicple isn't new, thie application is.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As did I . The reason they did it was so they could remove it from the wall so the could then smash the wall.
Then I went to the web site:
http://xflexsystem.com/content.aspx?page=technology
and apparently it is supposed to be anchored and stuck the wall. However new building build with the will be safer from blasts.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Look at the damage done to buildings in terrorist attacks, the bomb is usually outside and blows the shell of the building in while the structure itself often survives.
With the wallpaper, the outside shell would remain together, no shrapnel blasting in or collapsing on people. Outside walls in big buildings rarely carry a structural load.
So this isn't meant to keep your house up against an earthquake or something, it really is what it says it is, supposed to stop the wall from collapsing from a bomb blast. NOT to keep it intact as a load bearing structure, but to keep it from doing damage to people inside.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'd just like to add that by strengthening tension, the stress is distributed a lot more evenly than the compression side, making fewer weak spots to tear through.
Living by beach sounds wonderful, until you realize that everything there has a 1/3rd useful utility span; and you get to pay for that too. So you buy the 50 year shingles, and the Treated Lumber, and Heavier Wiring. But the question remains. Can I paint this stuff? Can I work with this stuff? So what if it can make a Tornado ask, "Please?"; can it withstand the dust, and salt, combined with the moister of the ocean or the dry air of desert breezes?
Sure, it's bomb-proof, but what I really want to know is, is it kid-proof? I've got a child that has done several hundred dollars worth of drywall damage just be playing in the house...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
> "...is so effective that a single layer can keep a wrecking ball from smashing through a brick wall, and a double
> layer can stop blunt objects (i.e. a flying 2×4) from knocking down drywall. According to its designers, covering an
> entire room takes less than an hour."
"Congress has already had the Capital Building and its offices covered within a few days. Schools for children in Iraq should be covered within 15 years, according to schedule."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Hey, I can certify that my Warrior, while wearing plate armor gets usually cut down by Huntards and their arrows, *and* I have 450 Blacksmithing. Will roll a DK to test the effectiveness of that class wearing armor.
Come on guys - it's physics.
Was there somebody suggesting otherwise?
I'm not saying that this isn't cool, but it's not unique - thinking composite materials here.
You know of another technology/product for cheaply (I assume), easily and quickly strengthening walls against things like tornado debris? By all means let us know. Otherwise, why are you sh***ing on this?
The point isn't to prevent destruction (have to repair or replace) the wall. It is to save the lives of the people on the inside of the building. This "wallpaper" idea seems to do well at that specific task when used on brick/masonry walls.
I was replying to someone who was suggesting putting it on both sides of the wall, who was replying to someone saying ...all sorts of stuff...
Anyway. I think it's unlikely that this would offer much protection in a tornado. Pressure differences between inside and outside are more likely to be the main problem - causing the roof to blow out which then brings down the walls regardless of what tricky wall paper you're using.
I think this will work great in the application that TFA talks about - protection from bomb blasts.
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
It's been posted already, but the Mythbusters were unable to find any difference in damage or wall or ceiling movement with windows open or closed. With windows open there would be no pressure difference inside and outside the house, so that would indicate that isn't what does the damage.
It's certainly not a large scale scientific test, but it does at least cast doubt on the theory. I think the main problem really is blowing debris. Unless the wind is strong enough to literally blow down the wall (which it can be in a powerful tornado but isn't always), the debris is what's going to knock out windows and punch holes in walls, which then makes the house more vulnerable to further damage, and so on.
If you can keep the outside walls from collapsing, the house may remain intact enough to provide protection to occupants against the flying debris, even if the walls do need to be replaced afterwards. For houses that don't already have a tornado shelter, it could be worthwhile, though maybe it would not be any cheaper than digging a shelter, I don't know.
This is as off-topic as you can get, but I can't stand it when people use "i.e." when they actually mean "e.g."--"can stop blunt objects (i.e. a flying 2×4)" makes it sound like a flying 2x4 is the only blunt object the author knows of. Lately, it's felt like a lost battle though.
Actually, there's a lot of testing for this kind of stuff going on in Civil/Structural Engineering right now. It's true that sometimes the bond between materials is the deciding factor for failure. With some of the newest epoxy and proper treatment of the wall beforehand you can avoid those issues, though. I do note that it says "Kevlar-like" material. I find it odd that that'd use Aramid fibers (what kevlar's made of) in such an application, since they have a moisture absorption problem. Glass Fibers are cheaper, but not as strong. Carbon Fibers would probably be more typical (despite their relatively high cost). The anchors at the top of the wall simulate a roof tie system. In an actual building, there's a lot that's helping hold it together. A live test of a carbon system (with actual explosion!) is here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oYm_bNgBLY . No angle iron needed, just proper treatment of the wall and application of the materials. now some of the bond may not be alright after this . . . It may not hold up to multiple blasts. The idea is you take a hit and you get someone out to repair the structure as necessary. The point is this isn't just a gimmick or misleading. There is actual hard core R&D going on in the development of FRP (Fiber-reinforced polymer) materials as a retrofit or new construction material for exactly this purpose, to increase strength in otherwise weak and/or broken structures. (UCSD used to be pretty big in this arena, they have some crazy testing equipment including a blast test simulator).
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy could have gone completely different with this stuff. Arthur Dent might have just slept through the demolition of his planet, or at least woken up to a large crashing sound, followed by a much larger crashing sound. Or perhaps it would've gone on mostly the same, except the bit about his house would never have happened!
I agree with you. Obviously it will devastate what is replaceable...a house. However a person...well that's irreplaceable.
a wall made out of it?
Precisely! If I were the company demonstrating the mesh, I'd put it on the front side as well-- at least that way they would get a confinement effect and the wall wouldn't be as traumatized. Those bricks have no gravity capacity in the state they are shown, even though the mesh on the back is preventing them from falling.
This kind of material have been used in seismic retrofit for years, and if you, the audience, have enough idle time for a long story, you can read on to see why. For a long time, up until the 1994 Northridge earthquake, concrete columns in the US that were not part of a lateral force resisting system were designed to have just enough vertical and horizontal spiral steel (usually none at the beam-column joints) to resist their respective gravity demands. Look up 1994 Cal State Northridge Parking Garage on Google, and you'll see what happened to buildings with this kind of design.
What happens is when a building moves laterally, the columns have to move to even if they aren't designed to dissipate the forces resuting from the building's lateral movement. Without the horizontal steel, the columns are not adequately "confined." When concrete is compressed, just like any other material, it wants to expand outward (not a desirable option with a brittle solid like concrete). Confinement resists these expansive forces and thus increases the compressive capacity of the concrete. When the structure above or below moves laterally, the column bends, and bending puts part of the column in compression and another in tension. Concrete has negligible tensile capacity, so the vertical steel is used to resist the tensile stress. Without confinement, the column's compressive capacity is lower than the tensile capacity of the steel. Concrete is brittle, and thus fractures, losing all of its strength. This is what happened to the Cal State Northridge Parking Structure; with the gravity system destroyed, the decks collapsed, and the walls fell inward with no diaphragm to support them. Had the columns adequate confinement, the column's compressive capacity would have exceeded its tensile capacity. Steel is ductile, and thus will elongate instead of fracturing, which will only occur at a much higher demand. Even with the steel straining, the column moving back and forth, and the thin layer of surface concrete spalling off, the confined portion of concrete within the steel stays intact, thus preserving the gravity system well enough to prevent collapse.
Current design codes, inspired by the garage collapse as well as others throughout Los Angeles as a result of this event, require a certain amount of confining steel over the entire length of the column. With existing structures, this is not an option. Thin composite jackets, probably the same material as the product from the article, have been shown to be extremely effective when wrapped around unsatisfactory columns in providing confinement.
Why go for the high-tech solution? This link describes 'Quake Safe' which was developed by an engineering graduate http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s1794024.htm shows that simple bamboo and wire wrapping can protect buildings in earthquake zones, a lot of those being in Asia where bamboo is cheap and readily available.
You are correct that it wouldn't be much use in an American house. However keep in mind that modern commercial architecture generally eschews load bearing walls in favor of pylons (reinforced concrete columns, that is) with "curtain walls" of brick or other material.
While houses in the USA are still built with 150 year old technology and load-bearing walls, most new public buildings in the USA are not - and thus this sort of protection could be quite useful. Modern architecture generally eschews load bearing walls in favor of pylons (reinforced concrete columns, that is) with "curtain walls" of brick or other material. A curtain wall giving way may even be an advantage in relieving some of the pressure from a blast, though how much of an advantage is open to debate.
Of course, the protection would only be partial, but I can see how this might be useful in some places.
Oversold as "bombproof wallpaper"? Of course. Useless? No.
How does this work better than pictures of half-naked girls already on my desktop?
When I saw "Bomb-Proof", I was hoping for radiation and heat shielding. in the Bay Area, WMDs worry me more than conventional bombs.
Interesting, thx. Further evidence that bamboo is a miracle plant.
-kgj
Then whatever you attached it to will go along with it.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.