WI: 'Super Wood' developed in the 1800's?

As far as modern application goes I would be very interested to see if we can reduce the cost of wind turbines with this material. Aircraft industry today would likely stick with carbon fiber as performance would justify the higher cost. Might be different in recreational aviation. Auto construction is another big one. Morgan is still making cars out of wood, the knowledge is there. Whether it would be fuel economical while strong enough for crash survival would take a lot of testing.

https://www.classicdriver.com/en/ar...ng-morgan-chassis-are-made-wood-true-or-false

For 19th century application I suspect the requirement of vast amounts of chemicals would preclude mass production for things like buildings, bridges and ships. But this was a time when wooden wagons and carriages needed lots of strong yet light wheels and axles. Weight reduction in gun carriages could make bigger field guns practical. I think these components stand to benefit the most.
 
OK, just riffing here (and I should confess at this point that I was a "C" student in both Chemistry and Materials classes XD)

  1. From the Wikipedia article on bicycles - after initial 2-wheel velocipedes, there came a point (1830s or so) where people thought 2-wheel designs were too unstable and 3- and 4-wheel designs became popular, but they subsided because of weight issues making them hard to move. Do these designs stick around if you can make lighter frames from superwood? Maybe peddle vehicles become go-to for small, light transport early on? Delivery men from the butcher's or maybe the postman riding tricycles down the streets of London or wherever pulling a little cart with goods (or even with the cart in front of them?)
  2. Superwood takes a bullet - how would it do with a piercing weapon? Would superwood armorclads bring about the reintroduction of ballistas for combatting them? Try to sink it by piercing the hull rather than firing cannonballs at it?
  3. I was thinking maybe they could use it on sawdust and then form that into shapes, but I see a post about how formed and shaped superwood would be better than the resins we use for carbon-fiber, so I suppose there wouldn't be a good reason to do the sawdust thing. You'd still need resin to glue it together. Plus, I guess you'd need to form the complex shape much larger than needed in order to account for the compression. But - maybe there's something I'm not seeing? Would superwood sawdust be viable for forming complex shapes?
 
As far as modern application goes I would be very interested to see if we can reduce the cost of wind turbines with this material. Aircraft industry today would likely stick with carbon fiber as performance would justify the higher cost. Might be different in recreational aviation. Auto construction is another big one. Morgan is still making cars out of wood, the knowledge is there. Whether it would be fuel economical while strong enough for crash survival would take a lot of testing.

https://www.classicdriver.com/en/ar...ng-morgan-chassis-are-made-wood-true-or-false

For 19th century application I suspect the requirement of vast amounts of chemicals would preclude mass production for things like buildings, bridges and ships. But this was a time when wooden wagons and carriages needed lots of strong yet light wheels and axles. Weight reduction in gun carriages could make bigger field guns practical. I think these components stand to benefit the most.

The de Havilland Mosquito would hev alot of successors then regarding recreational aviation and light bombers.

Steel would definitely take an impact, but it would like be used in things like electronics or other things. I wonder if this means less populated areas to an extent.
 
  • Superwood takes a bullet - how would it do with a piercing weapon? Would superwood armorclads bring about the reintroduction of ballistas for combatting them? Try to sink it by piercing the hull rather than firing cannonballs at it?

Instead of ballistas they'd probably have pointy rockets, as they would have much more oomph behind them.
 
Would it be invisible, or less visible, to radar/infra-red detection?

Doubtful. Stealth is not just materials but purpose designed shaping and elements like radar opaque canopy, inlet design, filling gaps between panels. Northrop Grumman built a Horton 229 entirely of wood without original internal metal structures and engines and found despite wooden construction and being a tailless flying wing, it could be detected at 80% the range as conventional aircraft.
 

SwampTiger

Banned
OK, just riffing here (and I should confess at this point that I was a "C" student in both Chemistry and Materials classes XD)

  1. From the Wikipedia article on bicycles - after initial 2-wheel velocipedes, there came a point (1830s or so) where people thought 2-wheel designs were too unstable and 3- and 4-wheel designs became popular, but they subsided because of weight issues making them hard to move. Do these designs stick around if you can make lighter frames from superwood? Maybe peddle vehicles become go-to for small, light transport early on? Delivery men from the butcher's or maybe the postman riding tricycles down the streets of London or wherever pulling a little cart with goods (or even with the cart in front of them?)
  2. Superwood takes a bullet - how would it do with a piercing weapon? Would superwood armorclads bring about the reintroduction of ballistas for combatting them? Try to sink it by piercing the hull rather than firing cannonballs at it?
  3. I was thinking maybe they could use it on sawdust and then form that into shapes, but I see a post about how formed and shaped superwood would be better than the resins we use for carbon-fiber, so I suppose there wouldn't be a good reason to do the sawdust thing. You'd still need resin to glue it together. Plus, I guess you'd need to form the complex shape much larger than needed in order to account for the compression. But - maybe there's something I'm not seeing? Would superwood sawdust be viable for forming complex shapes?

1) I could see a rise in pedi-cabs and delivery trucks based on OTL child's tricycle, with a passenger cab/cargo bed in the rear. We are seeing more and more cargo bikes these days. A wood frame bike or trike would be usefull in towns and cities.

2) Arrows/darts may have somewhat better penetration than bullets, but I doubt it would make much difference. Ballista used during the Roman period were not known as ship killers. As cannon grew in importance OTL, ship hull timbers and frames grew thicker and stronger. I would expect the same here.

3) A great part of the strength of structural wood is from fiber orientation. Thus fibreboard is good for some applications, but is useless for many others. It would be better to mold the complete sheet or lumber at the time of pressing. Wood shavings may have some specialized usage.
 

trurle

Banned
Last year, scientists reported the development of a simple and effective two-stage industrial process, purportedly capable of transforming bulk natural wood directly into a high-performance structural material, with a more than tenfold increase in strength, toughness and ballistic resistance, and with greater dimensional stability; as strong as steel, but six times lighter (comparable in weight and density to aluminium). First, natural wood is boiled in an aqueous mixture of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulphite (in much the same manner as the creation of wood pulp for paper), before being heat-compressed; resulting in the total collapse of cell walls, and the complete densification of the natural wood, with highly aligned cellulose nanofibres.
Likely the variation of this tech did exist in 19th century but was forgotten as not practical enough for some obscure reason. I remember some early steamers in 19th century did use "cofferdams filled with compressed cellulose" as ballistic protection.
 
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