Do you feel lucky plank? Meet the new ‘bulletproof’ wood

AUG 1 – Could your own home take a bullet for you?

Clad it with a brand new sort of modified wooden, and it would, says Alex Lau, co-founder and govt chairman of InventWood.

The US-based firm has developed Superwood – a modified wooden it claims is stronger than metal.

During lab tests, a fuel gun fired a bullet-like projectile at skinny items of wooden, together with an early model of the corporate’s product.

While the projectile blasted straight by way of the pure wooden, it did not penetrate the closely modified model.

Mr Lau means that the product might have navy functions, comparable to in battlefield shelters, however admits they “haven’t tried dropping bombs on it”.

In the race to decarbonise development, supplies comparable to concrete – related to high greenhouse gas emissions – are coming underneath ever-greater scrutiny.

Wood-based development, proponents say, can really assist in the battle in opposition to local weather change by storing giant quantities of carbon long-term.

But pure timber just isn’t at all times robust sufficient for sure functions and it will probably degrade when uncovered to moisture or wood-gobbling bugs.

That’s the place engineered wooden merchandise are available in. They promise to be considerably stronger and extra resilient – dependable sufficient, even, to kind the structural frames of skyscrapers. The development business is more and more pushing wooden to new limits.

“You can almost massage the wood so you’re squeezing air and imperfections out,” explains Mr Lau as he describes the method of treating timber with chemical compounds to take away lignin, a polymer present in wooden, after which compressing it extraordinarily firmly to cut back its quantity by round 80%.

This has the impact of making extra hydrogen bonds inside the materials, provides Mr Lau, considerably strengthening it despite the fact that it turns into a lot thinner than the unique timber.

A key benefit, InventWood says, is in retaining the wooden’s enticing grain within the completed product.

InventWood has spent years refining its course of – it used to take greater than per week. Now, workers could make a bit of Superwood in hours.

The firm will use wooden from poplar bushes initially however Mr Lau says it’s additionally potential to make use of bamboo.

“We can grow suitable bamboo feedstock in like three or four years,” he says. “It’s really an efficient way to draw down carbon from the atmosphere.”

There are already a variety of engineered and modified wooden merchandise in the marketplace. Take glulam, or glue-laminated timber, by which layers of wooden with the grain going through in the identical route are glued collectively to make robust, moisture-resistant beams.

Cross-laminated timber (CLT), in the meantime, includes stacking layers of wooden with the grain in alternating instructions, to make panels for partitions and flooring. Like an ultra-tough plywood.

Using CLT as a substitute of concrete to construct a group centre might scale back carbon emissions related to the development and operation of the constructing by practically 10%, a study published in June suggested.

Superwood isn’t designed to compete with these merchandise, says Mr Lau. But it might present a extra aesthetically pleasing, and structurally sound, ending layer to them, for instance. Or, it might perform as a sturdy exterior cladding.

It’s a “promising” expertise, says Morwenna Spear, analysis fellow at Bangor University’s BioComposites Centre.

Though she factors out that, in environments such because the UK, wooden that’s used externally on buildings should deal with climate that cycles from moist to dry extraordinarily incessantly. “I’d want to see some data coming from them about that,” she says.

Other firms are engaged on totally different engineered wooden merchandise.

Pollmeier in Germany, for instance, has BauBuche – a laminated veneer lumber, very skinny layers of wooden pressed and glued collectively – made utilizing beech. That’s attention-grabbing as a result of beech just isn’t usually thought of the primary selection for development.

“By processing it into veneers, Pollmeier found a way to use it much more structurally,” explains Michael Ramage, director of the Centre for Natural Material Innovation on the University of Cambridge.

There’s additionally 3RT in Australia, which makes use of skinny veneer sheets of low-value bushes or “pulp logs”.

It permits them to imitate the construction and density of far more precious hardwood. The product has lately been utilized in giant window frames and in addition to make kitchen cupboards, furnishings and the treads of inner staircases.

With so many wooden merchandise rising, Dr Spear says that architects and designers at this time have far more selection when it comes to how they use wooden in a constructing.

“It may be that we think of these new products almost as pseudo-species,” she says. “It just increases that palette of options to people.”

There are nonetheless boundaries to wooden in development, although, says Prof Ramage: “Is the mortgage the same rate as a mortgage on a concrete building? Is the insurance the same price?”

He advocates for the broader adoption of wooden merchandise mainly due to their skill to retailer carbon over a few years, although he notes that there are some jobs wooden can’t do. “We’re always going to need concrete in the ground for foundations,” he says.

Mr Lau factors out that, after the devastating wildfires that hit Los Angeles in January, some people have questioned the knowledge of utilizing wooden as a constructing materials. But he insists that Superwood has proved fire-resistant in checks.

Separately, the wooden has additionally survived publicity to wood-eating bugs, provides Mr Lau. While it’s harder to work with than pure timber, it will probably nonetheless be sawn in a standard method with carbide or diamond-tipped blades.

We shouldn’t overlook the significance of recycling previous timber amidst the rise of extremely engineered wooden merchandise, although, says Dr Spear. Researchers within the UK have proven that waste wooden from demolished buildings could be repurposed in CLT-style panels.

Plus, you in all probability have already got a major variety of recycled wooden merchandise in your individual house, demonstrating that novel methods of utilizing wooden actually have develop into fairly mainstream lately. “So much of our furniture is made… of particle board – a huge proportion of that comes from recycled timber,” says Dr Spear.

By BBC