Re:Stronger Than Steel: Synthetic Spider Silk [video]
by abakker on Saturday August 24, 2019 @12:02PM
(#20787895)
All the synthetic silk products I’ve ever seen are very susceptible to UV damage. Modern synthetic winch lines are synthetic silks, and while they are very strong, they need to be kept covered to ensure UV stability.
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Re:Stronger Than Steel: Synthetic Spider Silk [video]
by ianai on Saturday August 24, 2019 @12:08PM
(#20787933)
That’s very informative! What do you figure are potentially new applications for this that aren’t possible without it?
Re:Stronger Than Steel: Synthetic Spider Silk [video]
by abakker on Saturday August 24, 2019 @08:58PM
(#20790685)
Safety. It’s light, and doesn’t store a lot of elastic energy, so when it does fail it doesn’t whip. That is a feature for winch lines and webbing bits for climbing.
Usually with these new fibers, the applications are lightness, since for applications without weight sensitivity steel is pretty awesome.