carbon nanotubes to reinforce steel?

[marcinek]

There was found an actual nanotube structure in old damascus steel.

Welcome. Do you have any documentation of this discovery? Source material?

And you need to get rid of that link in your post to a site that sells stuff. They are not a BF supporter. The fact that you jumped into a 3.5 year old thread to link to a site might be taken as suspicious.

 

[Mo2]

I was working in my lab today mixing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and polymer and just wondered something. Has anybody tried mixing CNTs and steel to reinforce it? I don't know anything about metallology but I'm assuming martensite relies on carbon's reinforcement effect. CNT polymer composites uses the CNTs as a reinforcement much like steel struts in a concrete building. Amorphous carbon is known to have much less of a reinforcement effect than CNTs so this may be something that could be exploited...

Anyway this is purely out of scientific interest. There are a few roadblocks (sharpening/shaping CNT loaded steel would require extensive protective gear and therefore would have a number of health and safety red tape).

CNT-epoxy composite is most likely tougher than g10 or micarta so there may be milage of it as a grip there too.

And advanced apology if I have missed anything obvious. My field is carbon and I know almost nothing of metals and I just wondered if someone could kindly shead some light to it. Please let me know if this has been tried before or you think this may or may not work. Thank you for your help in advance.

Last I heard about carbon fiber composites and cnt in epoxy solution... Was that they were having a difficult time dispersion of the cnt thoughtout the layup layers. Has this progressed further? One of the companies that was trying to use this tech for carbon fiber wheels stopped responding to the general public

 

[Larrin]

There was found an actual nanotube structure in old damascus steel. I wouldn't advice just to buy the stuff and mix it in a forge, but there sure is a way to temper with a material and enhance the steel. This can be really interesting experiment.

You resurrected a four year old thread to bring up a study claiming nanotubes in damascus, which was already pointed out in the thread four years ago.

 

[mat55]

Welcome. Do you have any documentation of this discovery? Source material?

And you need to get rid of that link in your post to a site that sells stuff. They are not a BF supporter. The fact that you jumped into a 3.5 year old thread to link to a site might be taken as suspicious.

There were actually multiple of articles and other resources about this. For example: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-88201-5_35 About that link... its descriptive about enhancement that can be done by nanotubes. I dont't really expect somebody from the forum buying high-end industrial material.

 

[Lapedog]

If the carbon nanotubes can survive being mixed into 3000-degree F melted steel, and disperse themselves somewhat evenly like an alloying element, then I'd bet it would have a good strengthening effect. Grinding metal already creates hazardous fine dust and gasses, I'm not sure if the tubes are worse or if they would get vaporized during grinding or remain embedded in metal alloy dust or what.

Not to shit in anyone's cereal bowl or anything, but that article linked above barely even qualifies as pseudo-science. All it basically says is that someone looked at a damascus blade with an electronic microscope, and thinks they saw something that might indicate that there could maybe be some carbon nanotubes around some nano-sized metallic filaments within the metal.

"To Europeans, Damascus steel blades seemed magical. Not only could they cut a piece of silk in half as it fell to the floor, they could cleave rocks and their own swords without losing sharpness."

'Nuff said.

Yeah that’s the article I got made fun of for. Turns out it is an article made to sensationalize and not inform.

I don’t see why diamond stones wouldn’t be able to sharpen a steel with CNTs in it. I think it is an interesting concept but I wonder how a bunch of ridgid tubes would running through the steel would affect the grain formation of the steel. I also too wonder if they could survive the forging process or would just melt down like other carbon does in steel.

Edit: Oh no I got bit by the zombie thread! I feel myself turning.....

 

[NJBillK]

they could cleave rocks and their own swords without losing sharpness."

'Nuff said.

This is the part that I love about this... They are saying that one sword could cut another (of the same type) in half... This raises so many questions...

Who was to say which of the two swords was to be cut? The chopper or choppee?

If you didn't know ahead of time, would it be that whoever held the full sword on the fight by default?

Did the sword have to be aligned with magnetic north to take advantage of the nano-tubes?

 

[Natlek]

Actually this is a pretty cool idea.

As a blade steel, it would probably suck. I'm no metallurgy expert, but there's gotta be something that would make it impossible (or at least mean that it would be less than ideal for an edge)

I can see it being used in composite blades in the spine steel for strength, while having a regular steel at the edge so that sharpening wouldn't be a problem. But then again, even as a "spine steel" it would need to be grinded and finished into shape, so the tubes might still pose a problem, if only during manufacturing.

I would love to see someone do some experiments to try this out, but sadly I don't see it happening any time soon.

I'm halfway to make knife like that , but with regular carbon fiber . Some kind of SAN-MAI...... Mold is ready and actually I'm waiting only right epoxy to try to do that .
Well , this is the plan...............

 

[Natlek]

If the carbon nanotubes can survive being mixed into 3000-degree F melted steel, and disperse themselves somewhat evenly like an alloying element, then I'd bet it would have a good strengthening effect. Grinding metal already creates hazardous fine dust and gasses, I'm not sure if the tubes are worse or if they would get vaporized during grinding or remain embedded in metal alloy dust or what.

Not to shit in anyone's cereal bowl or anything, but that article linked above barely even qualifies as pseudo-science. All it basically says is that someone looked at a damascus blade with an electronic microscope, and thinks they saw something that might indicate that there could maybe be some carbon nanotubes around some nano-sized metallic filaments within the metal.

"To Europeans, Damascus steel blades seemed magical. Not only could they cut a piece of silk in half as it fell to the floor, they could cleave rocks and their own swords without losing sharpness."

'Nuff said.

The melting point of carbon fiber is >3000°C in vacuum, however it will dissolve in liquid iron so it is no good .............or it is

 

[Mecha]

This is the part that I love about this... They are saying that one sword could cut another (of the same type) in half... This raises so many questions...

Who was to say which of the two swords was to be cut? The chopper or choppee?

If you didn't know ahead of time, would it be that whoever held the full sword on the fight by default?

Did the sword have to be aligned with magnetic north to take advantage of the nano-tubes?

I guess they were saying that a sword acquired from Damascus, Syria that was made with crucible iron from India, was able to cut their own home-forged swords in half.

Just more of the "European swords were crude" thing that gets thrown around, like so many other off-base sword facts!

As far as I'm concerned, all that happened is that during the slow crucible steel-making process, some extra carbon ordered itself near or around some microscopic vanadium(?) dendritic filaments. Very slow cooling with a rich micro-alloying environment is sure to do some strange things. Mete is right, it was another case of "nanotubes" being the hot buzzword! Millions of internet clicks just because it was in the headline.

Step 1: Use nanotubes in the headline
Step 2: ________________
Step 3: Profit!

 

[Natlek]

Last I heard about carbon fiber composites and cnt in epoxy solution... Was that they were having a difficult time dispersion of the cnt thoughtout the layup layers. Has this progressed further? One of the companies that was trying to use this tech for carbon fiber wheels stopped responding to the general public

Sory if I don t fully understand your post ...but nanotubes are used years ago in many carbon fiber parts ....in sport like F1 then racing bicycles, military ......I remember that years ago they cost over 3000 $ per gram ...now they a cheap even for me I have carbon fishing rod years ago with nanotubes .Lighter and more stronger then ordinary rods .I have too rods with graphene in them .......but honestly with last one I can t feel difference from added graphene