• chaogomu@lemmy.world
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      9 个月前

      Hardness isn’t the best thing to have in armor. In fact, extreme hardness means extreme brittleness.

      Tensile strength is more desirable in armor. That’s the sort of strength that a string or rope, or Kevlar will have.

      Those can stretch a bit before breaking.

      Kevlar will stretch a bit when catching a bullet, this does a few things, but importantly it slows the bullet before stopping it.

      So this new material will likely show extreme tensile strength rather than hardness.

        • 0ops@lemm.ee
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          9 个月前

          Not to mention, really hard tires would have very poor grip. The rubber needs to be a bit softer to squish around all of the little imperfections in the road, technically increasing the contact area and providing a little lateral bracing (probably not the right term so I hope I’m making sense). This is why a lot of performance tires have shorter lifespans then other tire types, because in addition to a different tread pattern, they also often use a softer, “stickier” rubber, which wears out faster.