SUPER LIGHT

Beautiful materials with incredible properties: lightweight engineered materials range from familiar carbon fibre composites to aerogel, the lightest of all. While these materials help to reduce the weight of products, apparel, buildings, automobiles and aircraft, their incredible properties also help to open up new areas for design. This material trend book features recent developments in alloys, composites and super fibres, as well as celebrating inherently light natural materials that inspire design and engineering. The samples, which range from mass-produced structural materials to laboratory experiments, are intended as an inspiring starting point for all types of design project.

 

The book contains 64 unique samples covering lightweight alloys, fibre-reinforced plastics, carbon, aramid (Kevlar), basalt, pultrusion, filament winding, resin infusion, foams (including aerogels), thermoplastic composites, self-reinforced plastic (SRP), nonwovens, laminates, balsa and hinoki. Each one is labelled with critical information about the materials and manufacturing technology. Alongside each set of samples is a description of the performance and properties that makes each one so valuable. No studio is complete without a collection of the most extreme structural materials and this book offers just that.


CONTENTS

Naked strength

Ultra tough

Reinventing composites

Mimicking nature

Maximum stiffness

Minimum weight

Cellular solid

Technical textile

Super fibre

Natural lightness