Researchers from MIT have developed a structure made of lightweight materials such as tiny blocks that can be attached together similar to a child’s building bricks toy LEGO. The new lightweight material has the potential to revolutionize the way people build spacecraft, airplanes, and even massive structures such as levees and dikes.
The new construction technique is described in a research paper that will be published this week in Science, co-authored by Neil Gershenfeld, MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms director, and post-doc Kenneth Cheung.
Gershenfeld compares the structure made from small, identical parts interlocked together to a chainmail. The parts, which Cheung and Gershenfeld had based on a geometry novel, form an impressive structure which is stiffer by 10 times for a certain weight as compared with the current ultra light materials. Moreover, the completed structure can both be disassembled then easily reassembled which can come in handy when the need to repair damage or recycle the small parts into another configuration are realized.
According to Gershenfeld and Cheung, the small individual parts can undergo mass production. In fact, they are already developing a robotic system that can handle the assembly of the parts into airplane fuselages, wings, rockets, and even bridges. These are just some of the several possibilities of what the system can really do.
The new assembly technique allows lesser material needed to carry a given weight. For one thing, the weight of vehicles will be reduced resulting to a lower usage of fuel and operating costs. Another thing is that it will reduce the expensive costs of construction and assembly with the capacity to achieve bigger design flexibility at the same time. The system would prove to be very useful for things that you need to move regularly or for those that should be put in the air or even in space.
Aside from Gershenfeld and Cheung, there are other people from MIT who are involved in the project. They are Joseph Kim, an undergraduate, and Sara Hovsepian, an alumna. It is funded by DARPA and the Center for Bits and Atoms together with Spirit Aerosystems on composite development.
