In this article I will discuss the concepts and work being done around lightweight designs. The article follows on from a recent description of the ladder chassis. The downside of the ladder chassis is that the body sits on top and the whole vehicle can be quite heavy. Conceptually, this is a simple topic, but in practice is somewhat more difficult to achieve. It is simple … [Read more...]
Kevlar
A few weeks ago, I described carbon fibre and this article is about Kevlar – another material discovered via chemistry. It was back in 1965 that a chemist at Du Pont, Stephanie Kwolek, discovered the forerunner of Kevlar. She had mixed a batch of polymers and it was cloudy rather than clear and so she decided to test it further. The cloudy solution was spun into a very light … [Read more...]
