the outer skin of the world’s biggest
airliner the Airbus a380 must be super
light and super strong so the designers
borrowed an idea from the 12th century
Mongol burn combining two different
materials to make a composite in the
a380 the first material is lightweight
aluminium but the second material must
be incredibly strong to withstand high
speed impacts
so materials engineer Paul Hawk is about
to show me a very special food of glass
so I just put that in area yeah put it
put it in the flame so if so move it
back towards the point of the flame keep
keep rotating it to say to distribute
the heat glass becomes a liquid at
around 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit you’ll
feel it begin to go soft and a bit sort
of floppy let’s go and bend it let’s go
now okay Wow Wow we’re still connected
look at that we are still connected you
may not be able to see but we are still
connected by glass there we go this is
just glass it’s just glass so this is
pure ordinary glass that we’ve just
coiled up again why is this doing this
it’s thinner and therefore more flexible
but it hasn’t got the defects and cracks
on the surface which is why you can call
it quite nicely without it snapping this
is a glass fiber and it’s very different
to ordinary glass with no cracks it’s
incredibly strong it’s about six to ten
times the strength of steel if this was
steel wires and then this is this would
carry about six to ten times in between
as the steel wire would I’m mesmerized
by this stuff these glass fibers can be
woven like TechStars to produce sheets
of material
the next stage is to add liquid resin
when it dries it sticks the fibers
together to create glass in its
strongest form fiberglass let’s see if
this window can be smashed a hammer so I
just it’s it that would have done the
glass wouldn’t it
I think it would have done a couple of
shot give it well glass fibers provide
the strength the individual fibers might
break but the cracks can’t spread from
one to another it’s quite surprisingly
toughest and fiber glass is even tougher
when combined in a composite with
aluminium it’s called glass reinforced
aluminium or glare for short
the two materials are sandwiched
together in layers the aluminium
provides stiffness like the Buffalo horn
in the Mongol burn fiberglass is like
the sinew in the manga bone it provides
the strength that aluminium lags
airliner the Airbus a380 must be super
light and super strong so the designers
borrowed an idea from the 12th century
Mongol burn combining two different
materials to make a composite in the
a380 the first material is lightweight
aluminium but the second material must
be incredibly strong to withstand high
speed impacts
so materials engineer Paul Hawk is about
to show me a very special food of glass
so I just put that in area yeah put it
put it in the flame so if so move it
back towards the point of the flame keep
keep rotating it to say to distribute
the heat glass becomes a liquid at
around 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit you’ll
feel it begin to go soft and a bit sort
of floppy let’s go and bend it let’s go
now okay Wow Wow we’re still connected
look at that we are still connected you
may not be able to see but we are still
connected by glass there we go this is
just glass it’s just glass so this is
pure ordinary glass that we’ve just
coiled up again why is this doing this
it’s thinner and therefore more flexible
but it hasn’t got the defects and cracks
on the surface which is why you can call
it quite nicely without it snapping this
is a glass fiber and it’s very different
to ordinary glass with no cracks it’s
incredibly strong it’s about six to ten
times the strength of steel if this was
steel wires and then this is this would
carry about six to ten times in between
as the steel wire would I’m mesmerized
by this stuff these glass fibers can be
woven like TechStars to produce sheets
of material
the next stage is to add liquid resin
when it dries it sticks the fibers
together to create glass in its
strongest form fiberglass let’s see if
this window can be smashed a hammer so I
just it’s it that would have done the
glass wouldn’t it
I think it would have done a couple of
shot give it well glass fibers provide
the strength the individual fibers might
break but the cracks can’t spread from
one to another it’s quite surprisingly
toughest and fiber glass is even tougher
when combined in a composite with
aluminium it’s called glass reinforced
aluminium or glare for short
the two materials are sandwiched
together in layers the aluminium
provides stiffness like the Buffalo horn
in the Mongol burn fiberglass is like
the sinew in the manga bone it provides
the strength that aluminium lags
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