I've spent the last several days in Duesseldorf at a large plastics trade exhibition. Although this is a working trip, I always have an eye open for things related to my favorite hobby. While visiting with Kurary, a large Japanese manufacturer of styrene elastomers, I was shown a material called Hybrar. It's a styrene triblock copolymer which is elastomeric (rubbery). In the hyrdogenated grades, the energy absorption is remarkable- although if you squeeze a piece of it, it rebounds just like rubber, rapid impacts are totally absorbed. In one demonstration, a ball of Hybrar was dropped on the table alongside of a similar size/weight ball of a conventional synthetic rubber (in this case, Septon). As expected, the Septon bounced very well. The Hybrar bounced not at all, yet showed no inelastic deformation. I've never seen an unfilled rubber material that acted like this!
The engineers at Kurary promised to send me a few pounds to experiment with. I'm thinking that this could be a perfect material for turntable use... not to mention ultra-lossy speaker surrounds and possible a constrained layer in speaker panels.
As usual, no financial interest here.
The engineers at Kurary promised to send me a few pounds to experiment with. I'm thinking that this could be a perfect material for turntable use... not to mention ultra-lossy speaker surrounds and possible a constrained layer in speaker panels.
As usual, no financial interest here.