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Steel Velcro That Supports 35 tons/square meter

Posted September 08, 2009 4:37 PM

From Boing Boing:

Metaklett is a steel velcro-like substance created by Josef Mair and teammates at Technical University of Munich. One square meter of it supports up to 35 tons at temperatures up to 800 degrees Celsius. Conventional hook-and-loop fasteners are used for everything from bandages to cable boots in aircraft and securing prosthetic limbs. Mair thinks his spring-steel fastener is tough enough to be used for building facades or car assembly. "A car parked in direct sunlight can reach temperatures of 80°C, and temperatures of several hundred°C can arise around the exhaust manifold," he says, but Metaklett should be able to shrug off such extremes. The fastening is made from perforated steel strips 0.2 millimetres thick, one kind bristling with springy steel brushes and the other sporting jagged spikes.

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Power-User
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#1

Release mechanism?

09/09/2009 1:28 PM

Interesting. I wonder if there's a way to get it to release? The thing that makes Velcro so great is that you can rip it apart and put it back together again, over and over. It sounds like it would take a HUGE force to rip any significant area of this stuff apart (although I have and idea . . . )

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#2
In reply to #1

Re: Release mechanism?

09/10/2009 7:35 AM

I had the same thought, but this is from one commenter on it... "Keep in mind that it's 35 tonnes/m^2 in shear, but 7 tonnes perpendicular. That's 10 lbf/in^n, which seems pretty close to what normal velcro gets. The big win is in the temperature range."

Mind, I don't know the veracity of the commenter, so it may not hold up. But if it does, the next commenter is even more piquant, since his (her?) question is "how do you attach the two pieces to the surfaces to be joined?" As that commenter notes, it would probably require some SERIOUS bonding materials to hold up under that kind of shear forces.

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