You might not think of cement as an engineering material because of its brittleness. But a new engineered cement composite developed at the University of Michigan may cause you to think again. Specially coated fibers replace stone aggregate and act as ligaments that tie the cement together under stress. Engineering Professor Victor Li comments: “How the fiber works inside the composite—especially when loading is excessive and the crack starts to break—needs to be just right. it means that fibers don’t come out too easily. Otherwise you don’t have a composite per se. On the other hand you don’t want them bonded too strong. If that was the case you wouldn’t allow the fiber to slide; you would break the fiber. In either case it would return to a brittle material as opposed to the ductile behavior we are looking for.“
Ford and Unifi, maker of Repreve, will gather and recycle 2 million plastic bottles at CES and other shows for conversion into the Repreve seat fabric used in the 2012 Focus EV.
Thanks to embedded electronics, medical devices are getting smaller and smarter than ever. Pacemakers and implantable defibrillators are now able to call physicians. MRIs, CT scanners, and ultrasound machines are gaining mobility. And the venerable Band-Aid may soon be able to detect illnesses ranging from fevers to heart arrhythmias. On February 21, join Design News senior editor Charles Murray for a wide-ranging discussion, "Embedded Angles for Medical Products," which will explore the latest developments in medical electronics. The discussion will examine advances in medical device technology and offer an inside look at the embedded electronics behind it.
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