One of the strongest lightweight materials known

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Video: Melanie Gonick/MIT
3-D printing footage and experiment simulation: Gang Seob Jung/Zhao Qin
Graphene animation: Pond5/edited by Melanie Gonick

[Sphinxrave-dev]

I don't understand. First, it's a 3D material using graphene right? Then it was tested with plastic? Conclusion is: geometries can change various aspects of material.

But... where is the graphene part come into this? Other than that one 3D simulation which was ... on a microscopic scale rather than real life scale like these materials, judging by the hexagonal surfaces.

[zatharos]

Literally got clickbated by MIT…you gotta be fucking kidding me… instead of actually talking about graphene, which is what you're title suggests, instead you talk about the geometric feature it was designed in. Thats great that this new shape is exactly strong, but its still misleading

[moth.monster]

Two years later and this pattern is a standard infil in Cura. Science is cool!

[blvck_mvgic]

I demand this structure as an infill setting in Cura, it would be really cool

[highestqualitypigiron]

what's this "strongest, lightest materials known" though? they said they were making that structure out of commercial plastic.

[PerfectBlue]

the way you arrange a shape gives you different results.
Thank you M.I.T.
... ... ...

[jcz]

Print a standard I beam used in commercial construction from this material and test it next to a hot rolled steel I beam and put it through some tests. I want to see the results.

[ThreeBooleans]

I am passionately wondering if this could be applied to shipbuilding and be used to build an unsinkable ship hull.

[valerymoyseenko]

Material with a lot less size of 'cells' or 'microcells' would have other properties at all. But it couldn't be made by means of contemporary 3D-printers, need somewhat complicated technology. For instance, you can weave such multilayered structure of heat expanded material threads, kinda yeast, fill it with graphene compound, then heat it and you're gonna get porous material with stretched and oriented thin graphene layers.

[International]

looks like good research for 3D printed infill.

[tmusic]

The aim seems to be to build (3D print) graphene layer by layer in atomic scale and design yield strength by choice of structure model. Associate this to designed dislocations, if there is such a thing. This implies extraordinary macro level properties – as stated in the heading. Will be very interesting to follow.

[pendalink]

I think the point was that graphene would be the lightest thing that would also allow for materials to be made with this more optimal structure? But the video's really just about the structure

[sarkenjonathan]

Adjusting geometry and thickness changes the mechanical properties of the material! Amazing, maybe this Wikipedia article will further advance your research.

Honeycomb structure
Honeycomb structures are natural or man-made structures that have the geometry of a honeycomb to allow the minimization of the amount of used material to reach minimal weight and minimal material cost. The geometry of honeycomb structures can vary widely but the common feature of all such structures is an array of hollow cells formed between thin vertical walls. The cells are often columnar and hexagonal in shape. A honeycomb shaped structure provides a material with minimal density and relative high out-of-plane compression properties and out-of-plane shear properties.[1]

[scottmcman]

The interesting aspect is, how long before they realized that the key element wasn't the graphene?

[Andy-]

An atom is a 3 dimensional object since you could measure it in 3 dimensions, well if you could see it. So therefore an object made of 3 dimensional objects like graphene would be a 3 dimensional object. Just because you can't see it's 3rd dimension doesn't mean it's not there. The fact alone that you see 2 dimensions means the 3rd must also exist in order to give substance to the other 2.

[JP-rebc]

Hmm perhaps this could be used in military armor. Also in planes and rockets.

[dsalpha]

so can we make an armor out of this material? what is the weight difference?

[havutran]

Seems like many in the comments are confused with the structure of this video. I am a bit confused as well, but I suppose what they actually meant is that we can shape the 2d graphene surface in the way similar to that piece of plastic in the video.

*My question is:* the structure shown in the video does not seems to be homeomorphic to a surface. Or maybe it's the graphene's structure that allows us to make things that are not homeomorphic to a planar object? Can anyone give me the actual journal paper of that? (sorry if my question is too obvious, my knowledge in topology is very superficial, maybe there is some property of the surface of non-simply connected figures that I don't know)

[DebzLife]

*_Sooo.., basically this is the real life substitute for "Vibranium"? [Strongest+Lightest]_*

[heinzhorst]

Wow! Different geometries break at different amount of applied forces... Who would have thought that? Are they able to calculate the tensions inside the material? Maybe MIT should do more IT and leave this stuff to others...