Can broken glass build a clean future

[Music]

what if there was something

in nature that could show us why and how

it’s possible to start reducing landfill

it’s now the year 2020 and

it’s even though we’re entering the most

advanced technological

decade of our human history it’s still

quite impossible

to consider a world with no landfill

and one mask asked why that is why

considering here where we stand

in nanoworld country no landfill and

sustainability

has been the norm for thousands of

generations

materials that we use in structures and

devices

and that we take for granted are all

human created

this includes things like plastic steel

and pretty much

anything else that you can think of

materials take a heck of a lot of energy

to produce

and are a big actually the biggest

strain

on our planet here you can see our earth

in its uh majestic glory and it’s

important to remember

that all the materials that we take for

granted the ingredients for them

actually come from earth and i think

it’s pretty fair to say

that the earth is a little bit fed up uh

with what’s been going on recently

in fact the biggest single users of

electricity

in new south wales victoria and

queensland

are metal producers hammering home our

silent but powerful expectations as a

society

in our expectations of what a materials

driven society

actually is our prolific use of

materials is so entrenched in the norm

of of our thinking and that’s largely

because there’s actually nobody alive on

the planet today

that hasn’t lived in a period where

materials are just thought of

as coming from a factory that

has created a mindset where it’s often

thought that there’s an infinite supply

of things in the basement of a factory

which is actually not the case and

actually just last week i heard someone

saying that anything you want

you can just get it from alibaba

so our uh the connection between our

tech driven

ambitions and the strain on the planet

is broken

and that’s a link that we now must

unbreak so how can one break the link

between

materials proliferation and the strain

on the planet

fortunately the last decade has seen

tremendous advances

that are now at a stage of advancement

where they can start to come together

there’s two particular things that i

want to concentrate on and the first of

those

is digital manufacturing in particular

additive manufacturing

otherwise known as 3d printing 3d

printing

has allowed us to start to think very

differently about

the way in which we use materials and

the type of materials that we use

in addition 3d printing is a bit more

like nature in that it

adds material instead of taking material

away to get to a final structure

so it genuinely is an additive process

secondly there’s automation and data

exchange

in manufacturing cyber physical systems

cloud computing

and the internet of things which have

rapidly accelerated in the past decade

and give us the ability to be object

oriented

advanced computing has allowed us to

help unlock

nature’s secrets with things like

generative design

and artificial intelligence being

tremendously important

i mentioned nature in those last couple

of examples

and i want to spend the rest of the the

talk today talking you through an

example

there’s been many a ted talk previously

uh discussing 3d printing and advanced

materials

so i thought i’d do something different

and talk about the greatest materials

designer ever

and that is mother nature she is very

very very smart

and also has about a billion years head

start on us all

so it’s important to pay attention to

her

what you see here is a naturally

occurring structure

known as venus’s flower basket this

structure is found

at the bottom of the pacific ocean in

the dark depths of

of at least a thousand meters below sea

level where there is no light whatsoever

and most typically this structure is

found depths

greater than 2000 meters below sea level

this structure is actually made out of

what you and i know as glass

which chemists and engineers know of as

silica

what’s really interesting about this

structure is it’s comprised in a very

unique geometry that exploits free space

and very detailed structural elements

it’s so special that uh its properties

are superior to that of steel

and in fact it’s much much more

lightweight considering what it’s been

made out of

so professor joanna eisenberg at the

weiss institute at harvard

uh has spent a big chunk of the last few

years trying to understand

this structure and she attributes the

various length scales in this structure

from nanometers right through to

millimeters and then exploiting free

space

to create structures over tens of

centimeters as holding the key to this

marvel and its phenomenal strength

what venus’s flower basket has allowed

us to do as engineers

is to challenge the way in which we

think about materials

it’s also showed us that we know very

little even though the year is 2020

but it’s also showed us the exceptional

promise that can come from

nature inspired biomimetic designs

a little bit closer to the surface of

earth

and glass is one of these materials

that’s been used for centuries

and interestingly i think it’s fair to

say that we

know very little about glass as a human

race

some things you may not know about glass

that are typified in these videos

is that when glass is very very thin or

in fine dimensions below about

20 microns so about a fifth of the

thickness of your of your hair

it can become infinitely flexible which

is really interesting because

that probably would have saved you a lot

of heartache when you were younger and

you were breaking things

the other interesting thing about glass

is when it’s in large dimensions

and you can see that video on the right

where it’s dropped from a great height

on a piece of steel

glass can actually be very tough now

tough is actually

toughness is an engineering quantity

that means the ability

to absorb energy so glass can be very

tough in large dimensions

and resist cracking so very very

interesting

uh material and i have to confess once

again that as a materials engineer we

don’t understand these properties very

well

other than knowing that they’re geometry

dependent

but then this poses the question can we

now take glass

and and use glass in a way that nature

does like venus’s flower basket

and put together geometric arrangements

that could potentially replace steel

now if you think about the way in which

we work with glass at the moment

things like glass blowing grinding and

cutting it’s certainly not going to cut

it

however welcome to 3d printing

and we crack the door open to industry

4.0

3d printing in the last decade has

really uh

had some very tremendous wins 3d

printing of polymers

and metals is now a commercial reality

and in fact companies like general

electric are using 3d printed metal

components

in aircraft bits at the moment and

companies like bmw are certainly using

3d printed polymeric components

in vehicles but 3d printing of glass has

remained at the bleeding edge and still

does

but fortunately there’s a few groups

that are giving it a red hot go

so some of the examples you see here are

from neri oxman’s group at the mit media

lab

the other one is the micron 3dp

swarovski collaboration in austria and

the one on the bottom left

is actually australia’s own but actually

canberra’s own

maple glass so what you see here

in spite of being very very hot

temperatures is actually really really

really cool

and the results are very promising so

what you see here is a selection

of things that have been uh created from

3d printing of glass

and you can see that there’s tremendous

opportunities in controlling dimensions

there’s also tremendous opportunities in

creating

infill and using free space as a design

variable as you can see in the middle

there

and that gets us one step closer to

nature

but what’s perhaps the most important is

the ability to

take a computationally generated design

turn that into a digital file and deploy

that

with great accuracy as you can see in

that example on the right

and that is is the very first important

step towards generative

design so what you see here may look

like a collection of widgets

but actually they’re not just widgets

they’re widgets full of promise

it’s no secret that australia like many

other countries is having

a a waste and a landfill crisis

our low value exports are now no longer

able to leave australia

and our systems of a circular economy

and recycling

are not yet up to the task however

next year in 2021 victoria will be one

of the first places on the world so the

state of victoria

to introduce a purple bin just for

glass recycling and glass only

so based on everything that you’ve now

learned about glass in the last four

minutes

what an opportunity and what an

opportunity this is

so just like perhaps in the jetsons

you could conceive a situation where you

have a glass printer

and in the top you could throw something

broken or something you want to discard

and crunch crunch crunch it would create

a computationally designed

value-added product with no further

strain on the planet

and no further energy implications on

the planet

and you actually see an example of that

on your right

where you can see a commodity glass

bottle that was broken

turning into something else with a

computational design

of infill and water tightness

certainly from the point of view of

materials design

we must be able to design things that

are damage resistant but when we can’t

do that

they need to be recyclable and when we

can’t do that

they we must do that and then when

required things must be recycled

absolutely no doubt that at this point

is the best hope that we have

in terms of trying to minimize the

proliferation and damage on the planet

now for those that are very astute

listeners you probably would have

realized where was the thousand degree

temperatures at the bottom of the

pacific ocean

making venus’s flower basket and it

turns out

that mother nature is always a step

ahead because venus’s flower basket

when it’s grown at the bottom of of of

the pacific ocean

is not like 3d printing where we layer

material

but it’s actually grown organically

with no light around mother nature is

able to take

parts of the sea water particularly

silicic

acid and turn that into silica so while

venus’s flower basket is on the bottom

of the pacific ocean

tethered to the ocean floor it is

actually a living creature and part of

anamalia

so there’s still a lot that we can learn

and a lot that we can learn

for bringing us one step closer to

nature

i am however optimistic because if there

was any evidence

that being one with nature was possible

it’s certainly here in australia where

the indigenous australians not only

achieved it

but they achieved it thousands of years

ago

my hope is that all of you now

young and old pay particular attention

to what things are made out of

as you now know there’s no infinite

supply of material

and there’s no trapdoor at a basement of

materials factories with an infinite

supply

my hope for the next decade is that

everything that we make

for human consumption comes from our

waste streams

the way in which we’re going to make

that possible is by leaning on industry

4.0

and advanced computation including

artificial intelligence

that will drive generative design and

help us mimic nature

much closer we have a multi-generational

and social contract with our planet and

i leave you with the message

that the future is clear so thank you

very much

and i hope you never look at a glass

bottle in the same way

[Applause]