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    Steel Markets

    Advanced High Strength—Wood?

    Written by Sandy Williams


    The “woodie” automobile, popular in the 1940s and ’50s, may be on its way back, but in a seriously different mode.

    Japanese researchers are developing the latest challenge to automotive steel, a super-strength, lightweight product that uses wood as a raw material. Cellulose nanofiber, made from wood pulp, is mixed into plastics forming a product that is one-fifth the weight of steel and five times as strong, according to researchers at Kyoto University.

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