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This seems to be the research behind it: https://www.fpl.fs.usda.gov/documnts/pdf2018/fpl_2018_song00...

And there are only smaller comparisons towards steel. They are more focused on how it compares to regular wood.

In summary, what they are doing: 1. Boil the wood. 2. Press the wood. 3. Done.

Seems like a larger format version of Lignilock wooden nails https://www.beck-fastening.com/en/innovation/lignoloc

Cool. Conventional hardwoods can be pretty unfriendly to wood working tools, I wonder what the requirements are for cutting and drilling this stuff.

> The result is a material that has 50% more tensile strength than steel with a strength-to-weight ratio that’s 10 times better.

This sounds a bit implausible implausible. Steel is insanely strong, especially high strength steels, can be over 1000 MPa.

Here's the original paper:

http://lit.umd.edu/publications/TengLi-Pub91-Nature-2018.pdf

> The densified wood demonstrates a record high tensile strength of 587 MPa.

Yeah... ok it's 50% stronger than very low strength steel.

I think there are other problems comparing it with steel. Steel isotropic; wood is only strong in one direction. Steel has really nice and safe ductile failure modes that wood doesn't. Iron mining is not great for the environment but I doubt hardwood production is either, and steel can be easily recycled.

Seems like a great product but it feels like slightly disingenuous positioning.

Define "stronger"

Anyone can comment on this? Just reading this article, and not bothered by any relevant knowledge here, I'm scared that they're turning "harmless" wood into some sort of super product that is hard to break down later for recycling? Like how we did a nice job switching from Styrofoam to paper cups, except they now have a plastic liner that makes the paper hard or impossible to recycle? Or how I wonder what the city recycling is going to do with those "wooden" kitchen cabinets that I dropped off, that are completely covered in a plastic finish?

Is there any statement on the resistance of this treated wood to dry rot? It's cool that it's stronger, but if I were say building a house out of this stuff, I would want to know if it's more difficult for fungus to break it down.

From a quick read, this appears to be referring to the same process as was used by NileRed in their video about making bulletproof wood (https://youtu.be/CglNRNrMFGM). It should be interesting to tool around with when it hits store shelves.

Can we build shipping containers from this wood? It should insulate better and may let us build better shipping container homes.

If floor and walls were made of this and you fall on it, will it hit and hurt like steel or wood?

Their website [1] shows house built of this wood.

[1] https://www.inventwood.com/

I dated a girl who did this as a science project in high school a decade ago. This has been around for decades. Does anyone know why it is not actually used?

If I remember correctly these things bend under compression in a brittle way

This is not the first article I have read about it. Throughout all of them, though, one main question I still could not find an answer to is: stronger than which steel? HSLA, carbon, rebar?

Other than that, I'm all for it. We're renovating our house currently and made some structural changes. Would've loved to exchange some load-bearing steel beams with wooden ones so we could even leave them exposed as a design element.

This is cool. On the other hand, maybe somebody could build a tracker for these technological announcements and things that come out after a few years. Batteries are another fascinating one.

Here's one source of data: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=stronger+than+steel

I think the only real problem is compressing wood this way is not fast and you end up spending near as much or more on this compressed wood than you would on many other materials. I still think it has uses but this isn't some new miraculous tech that's going to take over everything and replace stuff like steel which is pretty damn cheap. Wood in its natural form already has some of the highest strength-to-weight ratios compared to non-exotic materials, but it does still has drawbacks.

I am curious how much grain structure effects compressed wood's strength, because with traditional wood you have to either very carefully select your pieces and avoid knots in bad areas, or just super over-build a structure so that no single points are ever a failure point. Like a stud-framed house can use garbage wood because it really only needs like 1/3 of the studs to be a stable structure, the other 2/3rds are just convenience for nailing things to it and in being able to use crappy lumber without any skill or knowledge and still end up with a safe and stable structure. Versus something like a timber frame where there are critical beams holding things up that you don't want a big gnarly knot in the middle of a span.

The process sketch in the linked article is soak wood in some unspecified chemicals for a while then compress it (claimed by a factor of 4). Wood is ~400/500 kg/m3 so taken at face value I guess that gives ~1800kg/m3. Pretty much where carbon fibre falls. I'd expect it to be done at elevated temperature too.

I think I'd expect that to work. It's not going to be better than steel, as steel is amazing for a wide range of reasons, but for something in the domain of marine ply / other engineered timber, sure.

Wood can be cut to size on site and composed together with nails and screws. Steel can be welded. I wonder what one does with "Superwood"...

Stronger than steel... I guess you won't be nailing it, I guess you'd have to prefab parts so you could drill through with like a carbide endmill since, unlike steel, you can't just use a magnetic drill like you would for field drilling holes.

Anyone else ready for wooden space ships?

My local forestery product association already claims that per unit of weight, wood is stronger than steel. We are seeing taller and taller high rises going up with mass timber.

The idea here holds merit and has been attempted before. The video below is a great watch about "bulletproof wood".

This company however is using it for the facade of the building not the structure, which is kind of a yellow flag. Many fancy headquarter buildings are after some novelty to show off. Facade is not a reliable market unless they can somehow integrate their wood into curtain wall systems and other high wind load applications.

https://youtu.be/CglNRNrMFGM?si=LhVQnWZfMyw_wssH

Interesting, they mention that it's more carbon-efficient than steel and concrete, but they don't give an estimate of the energy required to produce such material?

Metals could be molded unlike wood.

Wild question: could you use this for things other than construction? Like aviation? Wooden rockets? Cars?

I really really hope more companies get into this space. The amount of carbon to be saved by replacing concrete with something else is gargantuan.

This feels like kind of a big deal? How expensive is it?

Similar, this company builds wind turbine monopiles from wood https://modvion.com/

It matches marketing hype, but they seem to have a timeline of this summer. Does anyone know the drawbacks of this material?

> The result is a material that has 50% more tensile strength than steel with a strength-to-weight ratio that’s 10 times better ...

Maybe torsional, compression, flex, etc. strength isn't so good?

Otherwise, why focus on the construction industry? How about airplanes? Cars and trucks?

does anyone know if densified wood can be used as exterior cladding? Does it handle moisture/sun etc well?

Does anyone know if extensive genetic editing for construction wood optimization has been tried? Some planted forests have no food chain role whatsoever (like Eucalyptus in Brazil) so this seems super safe high reward endeavor.

If this could save material used for construction, that would be great!

Maybe (touring) skis could be a good application for this? Would be fun if somebody tried it.

This is awesome, but will it be cheaper than steel to produce and build with? Will it be cost effective in the long run in terms of maintenance?