PLASTEEL

You neglect the polymer-steel interactions.

Oliver

... at the melting point of steel your long chain molecules will have evaporated ...

"erincss" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m03.aol.com...

In order to "integrate" the polymers into the steel, the steel needs to be soft enough that if can be mixed with the polymer, that is, molten or nearly so. That temperature is so high that no organic material can survive it. All you would be doing is making high carbon steel.

John

In order to "integrate" the polymers into the steel, the steel needs to be soft enough that if can be mixed with the polymer, that is, molten or nearly so. That temperature is so high that no organic material can survive it. All you would be doing is making high carbon steel.

John

In order to "integrate" the polymers into the steel, the steel needs to be soft enough that if can be mixed with the polymer, that is, molten or nearly so. That temperature is so high that no organic material can survive it. All you would be doing is making high carbon steel.

John

Simple solution: we use metal nanoparticles which have a melting point around room temperature.

Or we could use some sort of electrochemical deposition of steel onto the organic fibers.

Oliver

Such metals are very weak and not comparable to the mechanical properties of steel.

Steel is a multiphasic mixture of elements. Electrochemical deposition is not possible with current technology.

As an aside, Spectra fibers, oriented ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene has a breaking strength greater than steel on a per-weight basis.

John

So does Kevlar. I once precipitated metallic silver into Kevlar. As spun fiber had been rinsed and was still wet and could be imbibed with silver salt. We were looking for conductivity but the 20% or so I put in did not change it. Don't recall any difference in physical properties. You could probably take gel spun PE and disperse metal in it by chemical precipitation before the final orientation. Frank

If you were to create a sintered steel structure, with a small amount of porosity, and then impregnate with a polymer, you would have the physical mixture you're talking about. Unfortunately, this typically degrades the steel's mechanical properties without adding toughness or flexibility.

Of course steel wire reinforcement in rubber makes an excellent tire or drive belt - closer to the property blend you seek.

RT