What is the weight-bearing capacity of lightweight aerogel material?

[abhimohpra]

Hi Experts!
Does anybody know about Light weight Aerogel material?
how much it can bare a weight?
Thanks in advance.

 

[rcgldr]

You could start with wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogel

 

[abhimohpra]

Hi,
Thanks a lot again.
Can i buy such material? Any seller?

 

[abhimohpra]

Its most expensive material i could see.
Any other alternative?

 

[russ_watters]

Sure, styrofoam. But then, you haven't told us what you want to do with it, so I'm not sure how helpful that is...

 

[rcgldr]

You still haven't told us what you wanted the foam for, but EPP foam is similar to styrofoam, except it's more elastic and won't deform the way styrofoam does. Some radio control gliders are made of EPP foam, either as trainers (bouncable) or for combat (deliberate collisions).

 

[abhimohpra]

@russ_watters
@Jeff Reid :
The application is like pully or elevator without any rope support. Operated by machine independently. And it should bare minimum 300 K.G.

Simply a sheet carrying bulk weight without any support.

It is useful?

 

[abhimohpra]

Is it a light weight material which can bare heavy material?

 

[Adzoe]

Aerogel can bear considerable weight in compression mode, but is very fragile under tension such as weighting it with a load that is not directly over the supporting structure.

There is an aerogel half the weight of balsa that has better strength characteristics. See "Nothing to It" by Phillip Ball, Nature, Science Update, Web Page, (Pages, pg. 23)

For a reasonably thorough discussion of aerogels see this by a grade school student: http://adzoe.8m.com/sf2002full.html