Hair's Strength Inspires New Polymer for Body Armor
Researchers have studied why human hair is so strong to inform the design of new synthetic materials, including polymers for body armor. Observations researchers have made about why human hair is so strong and resistant to breaking could form the basis for the development of new synthetic materials , including polymers that could be well-suited for body armor. Human hair has a strength-to-weight ratio comparable to steel and can be stretched up to one and a half times its original length before breaking. Understanding why this is so was the aim of a cross-disciplinary team of mechanical engineers and nanoengineers at the University of California San Diego. Researchers observed at the nanoscale level how a strand of human hair behaves when it is deformed, or stretched. What they found was that hair behaves differently depending on how fast or slow it is stretched; the faster hair is stretched, the stronger it is, they said. Marc Meyers, a professor of mechanical engineering