newatlas.com: Back in 2014, we heard how scientists from Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research had developed a wood-based foam that could be used as eco-friendly insulation. Now, they've combined it with metal to create a composite that has a much wider range of potential applications.
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Hybrid foam, which will soon be produced on a commercial-scale, will be the new insulation in homes all over as well as becoming an acoustic and insulation boost in the floors of vehicles. While this is a wonderful invention that will allow houses to become a bit more environmentally friendly, I can only imagine how excited props departments everywhere must be right now. I am not entirely sure what this would be used for in theater, but I'm sure there are lots of options. I assume this could be used to replace weaker foam for certain projects which need a sturdier base, but cannot simply use wood because it needs some amount of flexibility. If, for whatever reason a set needed to have an area that was conductive this would also be a good material. As mentioned in the article, hybrid foam can also be used to boost acoustics.
I thought that the process of creating the wood foam and applying it to the metal sponge was really fascinating and the idea that the foam is more environmentally responsible is something that everyone can get behind. As with everything I’m sure when this becomes commercialized there will be some use for it in the theatre world. I was hoping for a bit more information regarding the properties of the materials like the weight of both materials or the new flexibility of the metal and wood hybrid foam. It is nice to see these kinds of creative solutions and the technology that is revolving around a now generally more environmentally conscience world. I could certainly see this replacing some of the foam use in the industry depending on the ability to be manipulated, though I will say it looks like it would be a big pain to try and paint.
This new wood-foam hybrid product seems like something that could be used a lot not just in home construction but also in theater. In theater, we are always looking to find ways to make things lighter. This is for a few reasons. One, a lot of the times we have to be able to fly a piece of the set in on a line set. The line set and baton can only take so much weight, thus these pieces need to be kept light. Second, often pieces of scenery need to be moved. Whether its getting moved between the shop and theater here in Purnell, on stage, or between cities via a semi truck, we don’t want these pieces to be heavy. The issue we run into with foam right now, is that it is not very structural. I think this foam will be able to change the way we build things as it is both light and structural. t
I wish this article mentioned the price of the wood/metal hybrid foam. It's hard to know if this foam alternative is feasible for homes without a price comparison to. Though the price may be inaccurate because they can use wood waste, which may be able to lower the price when they move to large scale manufacturing. Also, I wonder if it would grow mold because of its wood base. In regards to the metal wood hybrid, I'm curious to know how much weight it can take compared to traditional construction methods. I currently don’t think that this material has a theatrical application. Since it is wood pulp, this material probably takes paint differently the materials that we currently use and therefore would be difficult for paints to use. Also, from the article, I’m not sure if the flexible mats would work as a foam substitute. I’m excited to see what becomes of this material and how it starts to be used commercially.
So after reading the headline of the article I was very excited to read about a possible new structural material to use in construction. Alas this does not seem to be the case with this current material, but ther is a very interesting this that article seems to gloss over when it talks about the wood metal foam material and that is that it can apparently take and transferr electrical current. While I’m not fully sure what I would do with a acoustically insulating material that is also able to carry a current I am fairly certain that there are those in our industry that could use it fairly cleverly. My first thought would be to use it a part of the substrate of a stage deck to both help with acoustical dampening and to give you access to power in various places on deck without the usage of cables. My last thought after reading the article though was of course the German have a institute dedicated to researching new technologies in fabrication of wood.
What a cool product. After reading this article, I couldn’t help but think of possible theatrical applications for this material. One question that comes to mind is how strong the product is and if can it be quantified in such a way that can be compared to other sheet material on the market. The article talks a lot about the possible applications and how they would work in a nonstructural sense, but I think the value of the product is how it can replace the traditional counterparts. How does the material compare to products that are already on the market? Another thing that immediately comes to mind is honeycomb material used during carbon fiber layup. This is a technique that has been around for years but is often overlooked because of the price tag. I wonder if a composite such as this could be considered a viable replacement for plywood or equivalent sheet material with both cost and application?
This could be real y cool to work with and see where it goes as a material of untold potential. Until they are willing and able to publish any real numbers on the structural properties or the cost and production time frame I will not get any of my hopes up. They mention that it has a much higher strength and bending properties, but I would like to see some manner of a measure before I was to speculate on what it could be used for in our line of work. Every year we hear more and more new and different construction materials that come out or are talking about. Part of me wonders if we will ever see a time where those things make it to our industry. Or if we are shackled by the major construction industry and what they are using as the largest consumers of such materials and new technologies are a higher priority
This technology looks very promising as another engineered wood product in our arsenal of structural solutions in theatre. We use a lot of foam in this industry actually, but it's soft insulation foam used for carving or sculpting. A rigid foam could be very interesting when comparing its strength to weight ratio to traditional plywood solutions. Just like aluminum to iron, this new product may have a significantly better ratio. The problem with ridgid foam, even if it has great strength, is it's brittleness. I think the addition of metal foam to this product could act very much like rebar does in concrete, enhancing the ductility of the material before failure. I expect this product, to be extremely expensive, however, if it ever does make it into the industry, and only used in LEED Gold engineered buildings and such. IT is very good to see something which could potentially be made of our own wood waste and reduce our carbon impact just that little bit.
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