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Is Bamboo the Next Carbon Fibre?
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the BBC about one very cool building material: "Real carbon fibre, mind, is still just as wondrous as it was in the last century, even if a bit more commonplace in road cars. But it's still very expensive to make in large pieces and quantities, it requires copious energy to manufacture, can be very brittle if made poorly, is not recyclable and can impose a detrimental impact of the environment when being produced. In other words, it is ripe for disruption. Technology stands still for no one. But could nature provide carbon fibre's replacement? So argues Gary Young, a renowned manufacturer of surfboards who has spent his life pioneering alternative materials use for that industry. 'With the right approach, bamboo can be used in many applications in the automotive world where its performance qualities can better carbon fibre's,' Young says. 'Plus, it does not have a negative effect on the environment.''"
i can see it now. cars made out of bamboo instead of plastic and metal. http://www.cartell.ie/car_chec...
Well, that depends on a few things?
1. What you plant.
2. Where you plant it.
3. Who your neighbors are, and your current relationship with them.
Plant the wrong kind, or plant it without a 3' deep root barrier, and you will quickly have a neighborhood war on your hands. Expand this to commercial levels of production, and you could make a lot of people very angry with you.
One thing is certain, though? Once you plant it, it is THERE for 15 years, at the very least. And you'll be exceptionally busy for every bit of those 15 years.
[End Of Line]
Or just keep using completely safe fiberglass as a not so strong but almost as light alternative like they have been for years in race cars. In fact, you know what's usually around the carbon fiber layers in cars? Fiberglass or at least the same epoxy that they use to make it.
NO.
Bamboo is already making its way into bicycle frame design.
http://calfeedesign.com/products/bamboo/
Carbon fiber itself is just as recycleable as bamboo fiber. However bamboo, once combined with epoxy, it's just as unrecycleable and toxic as carbon fiber. I've got several ASUS bamboo laptops, where bamboo was used instead of plastic for a portion of the case. It was marketed as better for the environment, but to me it was just more esthetically pleasing than plastic. The bamboo components held up better than the hinges and the electronics.
What the fuck is up with all these BBC International links at the moment? We can't view them over here without a proxy/VPN. Surely another source exists?
IIRC, my latest pair of running shorts apparently contain bamboo fibre. Whether or not this is a good thing or not, or even just an excuse to justify their overinflated price, I've no idea.
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Bamboo has been used a lot longer than CF. Would it not be more accurate to say "is CF just a failed attempt at bettering bamboo?"?. You'd get just as many clicks - let's face it, that's all this article is for - and you'd do just as well at catching the eye of the eco crowd.
Hey guys, guys?! Someone tell me, are cats the next thing in vermin control?
Om, nomnomnom...
Every time you make a car out of Bamboo, a Panda dies.
Eventually there will be so little bamboo left, there will be swarms of Pandas in the street eating peoples cars..
Pandas - more real than zombies (now theres a FPS idea for someone>-) )
No.
Longer answer: No and it's not as eco-friendly as people would like you to believe.
1. You need to farm it. Farms in general are never eco-friendly as they eliminate habitat.
2. You still need to use epoxy to bond the strands together. This epoxy is nearly identical to the epoxy used in carbon fiber and fiberglass and is just as nasty.
3. The claim that it would break down in landfills is bogus. Material decomposition in landfills is slow due to the anaerobic nature of landfills. Also, bamboo encased in epoxy isn't going to decompose like typical un-worked bamboo.
And since bamboo is weaker than carbon fiber, but more expensive than fiberglass, I expect it to never take the place of either, except in decorative modes.
Yes, I know, you can build a bamboo frame bicycle that performs well, but it's expensive and a novelty. When it's not done well....recoil in horror: http://www.instructables.com/i...
Yeah, I'll take a steel frame, plox.
--
BMO
I think they mean, the first carbon fiber. (Not really, but certainly prior to synthetic carbon fiber).
.: Semper Absurda
expect the unexpected unintended side effects.
I'm always glad to see new developments in materials science, but one of the potential issues that jumped out at me when I see them looking at plant based materials for cars is whether it will be tasty.
Not that I envision a horde of Panda's attacking our new bamboo cars, but insects and rodents might well. There was a change made to the plastic sheath in automotive wiring some years ago to use a soy based coating, for example, and it turns out mice liked to eat it; dramatically increasing rodent damage to vehicle wiring -- I seem to recall an article where at least one manufacturer combated the issue by adding 'spices' to the coating to make it less appetizing.
No idea if that's a concern with bamboo; but its something to consider; along with any number of other things maybe nobody has thought about. Only way to find out is to try, right :)
The BamBaoni 5000
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why do you keep posting stuff from the BBC that's inaccessible to UK readers? :(
If a headline ends with a question mark, the answer is almost always "no". e.g."Is this an image of Jesus in a Danish pastry?" No. "Does this medieval painting prove UFOs?" No. "Could red wine be the cure for cancer?" No. etc.
Adobe is the car made out of clay!
The pinnacle of East German automotive technology, a car made out of wood.
All the geeks that swallowed the 1960s space dreams hook, line and sinker are going to have a heart attack when they realize that future is never happening!
We're heading towards a bio nano revolution! Along with everybody else in the human race right here on Earth !
Have gnu, will travel.
Any list of the relative properties of carbon reinforced epoxy and epoxy impregnated bamboo? Density, strength, elastic modulus, impact strength etc?
People use carbon fiber where its high strength / weight and stiffness / weight improve the overall performance and efficiency of a vehicle. Is bamboo as good?
River bamboo is pretty obnoxious and every couple years volunteers go around and chop and poison it in local canals. Only thing its good for is making reeds for woodwind instruments (a quality variety of river bamboo) and fun simple flutes.
Other bamboos are excellent for construction and making useful implements. Flooring for example.
I planted several thick walled and tall growing plants from culms on my property that I use for general construction. Too thick walled for flutes, a little heavy for surf fishing poles, but practically as strong as steel for some things. I have a bamboo walking stick much more trustworthy than a pine or oak stick. Watch almost any Chinese Kung Fu movie and you see bamboo used for high scaffolding on serious construction.
If you let them, some bamboos can spread with disastrous results, like river bamboo (arundo). In early California days, arundo was used by farmers to reinforce banks of water ways, but now its a noxious problem. Took me 3 years to get rid of it on my property when I moved here, but since my neighbors didn't, I still have to contain it periodically.
It's all about SD and microSD these days.
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Bamboo car from Gilligan's Island
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
No.
Henry Ford specified hemp fiber-based panels for his cars a hundred years ago, but a psychopathic government leveraged its corruption to benefit the tree pulp and synthetic fibers bosses, while claiming it was about social values.
IIRC you'd need a blunt 4' long and 18" across to get a buzz from hemp, and you'd die from smoke inhalation first. It's a great cash crop for farmers, can grow in less fertile soil (while improving it), produces Omega-3 "on the vine" and is far more productive per-acre than trees. So, a clear economic threat to those friends of the powerful.
It also makes fantastic long, strong fibers, once considered essential to national security.
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OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
late-because-panda-ate-steering-column
My feet would always be cold and clammy after a day at work. Tried a bunch of different sock types... cotton, wool, Merino wool, synthetics, etc. Nothing helped.
Then I tried Rayon from Bamboo socks (these guys), and my god what a difference. Feet are dry and warm all day. They're the only kind I wear now.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Well bamboo is primarily made of carbon, and it is fiberous... so now we can apply the term "carbon fiber" to anything made out of wood, I guess.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I should have taken that basket weaving class!
Rick B.
At least up until the late 60's it was common to have natural material in cars, coconut fibers in carpets and seats etc.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
What happens with a wire in the car /vehicle ?
In areas where strong bamboo grows, it is considered as a bad weed.
And humans does not like bamboo groves around them, because the area will be infested with critters of all the varieties including different varieties of poisonous snakes. It keeps the area around barren because all soil nutrients will be sucked up by bamboo. And it is difficult to kill of bamboo if it take strong roots - yes there are natural and easy means but people are unaware of it.
In a forest like or vacant area beyond human population, it is great for ecosystem.
Bamboo is not just food, it's used for everything that hemp and wood is used for
It's a woody plant, so you can replace wood (such as floors, beams, panels, paper, etc)
It's fibrous, so you can make rope and fabric from it (replacing hemp, cotton, etc)
And expensive fishing poles and golf club shafts are made from bamboo
We could solve world deforestation with bamboo plantations on already deforested tropical land. We wouldn't need to worry about politicians worrying about hemp farming, replacing it with bamboo.
Plus, it does not have a negative effect on the environment.
Of course, that depends on how it is used. If the bamboo can be separated from the other materials, it will decompose nicely. It's another matter if you take bamboo fibers and mix them with epoxy.
Bamboo fibers are stronger and better than hemp ones
Carbon, kevlar, fiberglass and other fiber materials are used for tensile strength but as fibers, aren't much use by themselves in cars. The trick is to make composites with a weave or other pattern with the fibers and use a resin/epoxy to give structural strength to the fibers.
Glass fiber has some nasty properties compared to carbon and kevlar when used in such a composite. It's heavier in application, it tends to draw in water once the fibers are exposed to the open air and it breaks easier than especially the kevlar type fibers. This is part of why it's so much heavier, you need to make thicker strands of glass to make the fibers strong enough to not break.
The benefit of using glass is mostly production cost. For these reasons, glass fiber composites are used less on vehicles and planes and tend to be used mostly on recreational boats and DIY projects. For any place where weight is an issue, the more expensive carbon and kevlar type of fibers are being used.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Wrong. The body was made from waste cotton fibre bonded with phenol resin. It's a great material - light, strong, reasonably eco-friendly, non-corrosive. It's not a million miles from carbon fibre or even what this article is talking about. The rest of the Trabant was a conventional spot-welded steel monocoque.
It's lazy stereotyping to mock the Trabant without actually looking at how it was made. Sure, the design was dated and yes, the engines were terrible, but they were reliable and cheap, and actually a much more efficient car than most of the gas-guzzlers made in the west.
My main gripe about the Trabant's build quality was the poor panel fit, but that's not an inherent drawback of the materials it was made from, just a side-effect of somewhat old-fashioned tooling.
The problem with the Trabant's resin body was cold. I saw a Trabant collide with a Volvo once, it was about -10 degrees C and the Trabant's front end just shattered like glass. The Trabi was also very light, I remember walking past a Range Rover stuck in a big pile of snow many years ago. Somehow the driver had gotten himself stuck and was busy with a shovel trying to get himself out of. All of a sudden this Trabant with chained up wheels comes buzzing along, crawls over the snow drift like a snowmobile and disappears up the street. The look on the Range Rover driver's face was utterly priceless. I've always been a Trabant fan. Jeremy Clarkson hated it, but then he hates anything that doesn't have at least 500hp under the hood and an interior made from the skins of endangered animals. I'd like to buy one of the hatchbacks and turn it into an electric car. Imagine that, a sensible, electric and communist car with less that 500hp under the hood. One car that pisses Jeremy Clarkson off it four different ways at the same time.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
There is a range of expensive motorbike helmets made from Bamboo (and other foam) they pass the helmet standards tests fine. Also considering the Chinese in Hong Kong (and other places) use bamboo rods instead of steel scaffolding on high skyscrapers. Its pretty strong.
I really like its flexibility (both physically as well as in applicability) and stability ... and that it grows fast as hell :D
re:
"you need to make thicker strands of glass to make the fibers strong enough to not break"
Not so far as I recall.
Because Glass is an inherently brittle substance, the way you overcome this is by making many more SMALLER strands.
That way you can remove the defective ones more easily during manufacture. That is in fact the whole principle of fiberglass.
A single cylinder of glass will crack starting at a defect and working it's way out ... a cylinder the size of a pop-can for instance is guaranteed to have some flaws across many cross sections. If you use the same amount of material but with smaller bits with individual cross-sections more like a typical USB cable, the likelihood of finding a defect at any given cross-section goes way down. As such when a 5 or 10 out of 100 strands fail, you still maintain 90% of the theoretical strength. As the fibers get smaller (to a limit) your strength approaches the theoretical as you effectively eliminate the effects of the internal defects that cannot be removed.
Ouch
The real problem with 'wonder materials' is designers often don't know the basics of materials science and go for the 'strongest' material without even knowing what kind of strength they need.
There are 3 important kinds of strength:
This is the amount of force it takes to break a sample of a given shape and size.
This is the amount of energy it takes to break a sample of a given shape and size. Elastic, for example, absorbs a lot of energy by stretching before it breaks, so it has a high work of fracture, but most people wouldn't call it strong.
It has a low breaking stress because the final force at which it breaks is low. This is where the myth comes from that 'spiders web is ten times stronger than steel' - it takes ten times the energy to break a given width of spiders web than steel, but the same is true for nylon.
This is the amount a given size and shape will bend for a given force.
All of these are forms of 'strength' but materials that are strong in one are likely to be weak in another. For example anything that is stiff will bend by less before it reaches its breaking stress. W = Fs so it absorbs less energy before it breaks.
tldr: stiff materials generally are brittle - this isn't because they are "made poorly" but because of basic physics. It's the reason you don't make springs out of glass or walls out of elastic.
CF is an extremely stiff material - this is why its used in plane wings, where stiffness is much more important than breaking stress or breaking energy.
Most 'designers' - as opposed to engineers - don't understand any of this.
I remember when a co-worker excitedly told me he was buying a bike with a CF frame; bike frames mostly need to absorb shocks and only need to be moderately stiff. I groaned and predicted it would crack within a year. I was wrong - it took a month.
Surfboards don't need to be exceptionally stiff, but - like bike frames - need to absorb impacts and constant forces. CF is a stupid choice for them. Bamboo is tougher and is a far better choice.
For more reading I recommend http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-New-Science-Strong-Materials/dp/0140135979
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For some time I've been wondering if bamboo/wicker would be suitable for building quadcopters. It's strong enough to be the preferred material for hot air ballon baskets and light enough to be used in kites.
Yeah. Dice holdings, the current owners of Slashdot, are fucking with Slashdot, because it's like a free democratic press and venue to voice opinions for anybody, when we have paid reporters and carefully controlled opinions in the commercial press and media, telling everyone how to feel and what to think. You also used to be able to search your old postings on Slashdot, on Google, and until yesterday I've always been able to pull up one of my old postings via the search words "sillybilly linuxbios site:slashdot.org" but it's no longer possible. The days of Slashdot are numbered, and I would not be surprised if it went to hell and shut down as soon as the end of next week. But while it's here, enjoy. Oh, there is a Japanese spinoff, controlled by a different company, I don't know if they'd be willing to host an English version too for all the folks that get dumped by Dice Holdings, when the main Slashdot site shuts down. Or if anyone will know where to look for Slashdot. Oh, and Google, Yahoo have discussion boards meant to be like Slashdot, even Wikipedia is thinking about one, not to mention Facebook and Twitter where the usual nonnerds congregate and have discussions, so Slashdot is kinda safe from spamming from them for now, but that's another way to take it down, a united large effort conspiracy can spam the heck out of it like it happened to places like chatrooms, that were quite usable in the late 90's. The easiest way to spam it is with bots that keep making random posts. With bots you could take down Slashdot as soon as end of next week. So enjoy it while you can.
Another possibility is a hijacked connection, where you think you're interacting with the main Slashdot site, but actually you get a separate version for a select few people, possibly dangerous thinkers, and these select few people can see each other's postings and interact with each other but the general public cannot see their dangerous thoughts and posts. The pen is mightier than the sword, and yes, sometimes, with all this free speech, you might say something that gets taken out of context, misunderstood or misinterpreted, and has real world effects. That's another possible possibility, and the hijacked connection may be coming from Dice Holdings, or they may not have anything to do with it, or it might look like it's coming from Dice Holdings but it's not really coming from there, or even if it's coming from there, it's not the leaders at the top that do it but some infiltrators who will not be held responsible,... the possibilities are limitless.
There are other alternatives to slashdot: http://squte.com/ http://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
No problem, with using bamboo instead... but the encasement cover, typically epoxy, needs to be addressed too. Any suggestions? (I doubt that Gorilla Glue or Hide Glue are reasonable alternatives :-)
... "When you pry the source from my cold dead hands."
Carbonized/epoxied bamboo would work just fine as a natural carbon fiber, methinks.
For quite some time.
It's quite an amazing material.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...