Honeycombed wood

Wood has many structural applications and we’re used to seeing it arrive at building sites in boards or sheets. Perhaps no longer. A team from the University of Maryland has engineered a process that allows hardwood sheets to be manipulated into complex structures, such as honeycombs, which have higher tensile strength. The key is to manipulate the cell walls in the wood by rapidly shrinking and blasting open individual fibres and vessels, first drying them and then quickly ‘water shocking’ them. This creates a window during which the wood can be manipulated without ripping and tearing the material, potentially allowing constructors to mould it into any shape they desire.