Reinventing Materials: See through the Wood

A French architect managed the Tour de force to make translucent wood. A feat obtained by removing the lignin from the fiber and injecting into its micro cavities a bio-monomers. This hybrid material is also three times more rigid than its natural equivalent and, icing on the cake,  at the same time can't rot. Currently in pre-industrial research phase, this treatment proposed by the company Woodoo opens up new perspectives to the use of wood in construction as in decoration. Especially since it can be applied to essences considered as "non-noble".

Looking forward to see through Ulin ironwood in 2018!

Translucent wood

Forest to protect cities from earthquake

The deflected waves to protect a building can destroy the neighbor and, among the famous surface seismic waves known by seismologists  as Rayleigh waves, some have wave lengths large enough not to be affected by the already envisaged seismic invisibility systems. Fortunately, these problems seem to be able to be overcome using ... trees!

Experiments carried out in France with a small pine forest not far from the campus of the Université Joseph-Fourier in Grenoble, together with numerical simulations, confirm that the trees can behave as resonators rebroadcasting the waves of Rayleigh in a certain frequency band in response to the arrival of these of an earthquake. In the end, they are sent deep into the ground, even for large wavelengths. Oddly enough, the most effective protection is obtained with trees planted in a dense and random way. It improves again by covering a larger frequency band if the trees are arranged with decreasing heights.

Yet there is a problem: at the moment, the concept only works if the waves arrive from two directions only. But the researchers are confident. They'll blow up that lock.

Earthquake damaged road