Liz Nickels leafs through past issues of Reinforced Plastics to find out what was happening in the RP industry of the past

摘要

'A handful of scientists and new enterprises around the world believe that we could learn a great deal from the expertise of spiders and silkworms in the spinning of remarkable threads,’reported Cordelia Sealy in an article discussing the chemical makeup of silk and its unique potential as a reinforcing material for composites.’Some silk fibers have mechanical properties that exceed Kevlar,one of the strongest artificial materials ever produced,by a factor of more than three,as well as nylon and high-tensile steel.As is obvious from watching a spider ride its dragline silk or a web bounce back after the impact of a fly,silk is also highly flexible and extensible.This ability of silk - to stretch to up to 50% of its length without breaking - is one of its key advantages because it allows the absorption of large amounts of energy.(Fig.1).