Composites are helping architects to make highly unusual curved and freeform shapes in large buildings in the Middle East, such as the Sidra Hospital under construction in Qatar on the Arabian peninsula. Roofing panels up to 15m to 25m (49 ft to 82 ft) long have been made with the material. (Source: Affan Innovative Structures)
Ann, social media, at least of the facebook kind, has already gotten old and become a worthless collection of features, as far as I am concerned. Really, it is more like "spewing data" as opposed to sharing information, and very little of communicating insights is done, from what I see. I would not miss it one speck if it were gone some morning.
The various online discussion groups are different by quite a bit, and I enjoy the physics papers weekly publication and discussions as well.
Ah, Chicago still feels warm to me, Cabe. But I know what you mean about steel. I think composites are still a mystery. We don't know yet whether they're going to catch on and we don't know the full range of applications we'll see with composites. It will be interesting.
William, corrosion usually refers to what happens when metal breaks down. Composites can certainly break down, but "corrosion" is not the correct term. They delaminate, fragment, and suffer environmental stress cracking, as we've discussed here: http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1392&doc_id=238056 http://www.designnews.com/document.asp?doc_id=236816 http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=238200
Ann, actually, from what I have read, composites do corrode, but differently from metal.
The one other thing is that typically buildings are kept around a lot longer than aircraft or racecars, so that what happens after 30 years of weather matters on a building, while the race car is obsolete and the airplane is probably scrapped, or sold to the minor leagues.
Glad to see the reduction of wood use in architecture. But, I think that is a "no-brainer." A cow in a barn destroyed the wooden version of Chicago. Now, it's all rusty steel. Not a single fire since. Though, the city now has a cold feel to it.
William, I had the same question about damage, but I don't see why the wear problems would be much worse than what aircraft with carbon composite skins experience; in fact, they're probably not nearly as severe, since these buildings aren't speeding through the air and storms of hail, dust, and rain like planes do. Composites, of course, don't corrode like metals do.
Optomec's third America Makes project for metal 3D printing teams the LENS process company with GE Aviation, Lockheed, and other big aerospace names to develop guidelines for repairing high-value flight-critical Air Force components.
A self-propelled robot developed by a team of researchers headed by MIT promises to detect leaks quickly and accurately in gas pipelines, eliminating the likelihood of dangerous explosions. The robot may also be useful in water and petroleum pipe leak detection.
Aerojet Rocketdyne has built and successfully hot-fire tested an entire 3D-printed rocket engine. In other news, NASA's 3D-printed rocket engine injectors survived tests generating a record 20,000 pounds of thrust. Some performed equally well or better than welded parts.
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