Extreme steel 'Velcro' takes a 35-tonne load

newscientist.com

25 points·MaysonL··7 comments

Neat to see increased innovation being carried out in the steel industry.

The last innovative steel-related thing that caught my eye was ConXtech's Portable Tower at Burning Man 2008 (see http://www.theportabletower.com/ for a video on how they built a 10-story tower in 3 days using compression joints)

So...how do you pull it apart? Is this effectively a permanent fastener? If so, how is better than welding or something?

Like regular velcro, shear load capacity is probably much, much higher than the force it takes to pull apart.

Think about the most common application of velcro - shoes - you're keeping the two sides of the shoe together. Velcro prevents the two surfaces from sliding around, not from coming apart.

"Metaklett can support maximum weight when pulled on in the plane of the strips, and a square metre can hold a perpendicular load of 7 tonnes, says Mair."

So you only need a 7.1 tonne weight.

That's for the whole area. If you pull just a fraction of the area, the force required is proportionately less (think of a strip of Velcro that you pull apart from one end).

fun fact: the Firefox spell-checker knows that Velcro is a trademark, and must be capitalized. Obey the spell-checker. ("Firefox" is also).

You mean to tell me that you don't have a 35.1 ton weight sitting around anywhere?

According to the article, you can pull it apart "without special tools". It looks like it might work like a zipper: curving one of the sides of the connection disengages it from the other side.

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