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Can we bring engineering to the paper in paper mache? It's a mix of a binder and a reinforcing matrix. PVA is common for the binder and is strong. That's fine as I think it's strong enough and readily available. Can we do better for the traditional news paper? I think that glass /carbon fibres would be incompatible as PVA doesn't readily adhere. Is there another filler? I read somewhere that they used to make air plane drop tanks and boats from some sort of paper mache, demonstrating it's engineering potential.

I realise that this is more materials science than pure mechanical engineering, but there are commonalities and it's all we have on SE. I'm deliberately avoiding Arts & Crafts as I'm not looking for a child friendly, mix a long with mom type of material. I'm looking for the dirtiest, leanest meanest (probably cancer causing) reinforcement that's as strong as possible drawing on modern technology. The only stipulation is that it should be available to the domestic purchaser (so bags of nano tubes are out). Is there something stronger than newspaper?

Paul Uszak
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My favorite is papercrete, below is a link to the wikipedia article on it. This can be reinforced with simple fiberglass to make it stronger, unfortunately finite analysis would not be terribly effective on determining the strength of the material. You would have to make dozens of samples and test them individually to work on optimizing the mixture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papercrete

Gwydionforge
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Absolutely. Paper mache at it's core is an early predecessor of carbon fiber. The paper is the fiber structure and the paste (not sure of the technical term) is the equivalent to the epoxy.

If you increase the 'strength' of the fibers you'll eventually reach a point that the paste is the weak point, beyond which increasing the strength of the paper won't do much. If you increase the strength of the paste to a better adhesive you'll then be able to increase the strength of the final part.

Diesel
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