2. Passive and active cables, guy wires and tie rods
There's one area of civil engineering where the king is no longer concrete, but steel: cables, guy wires and tie rods. The reason is simple. Of all the widely-used materials, steel is the archetypal one associated with tensile strength, and at a price compatible with the scale of use (a cable several hundred meters long and several tens of centimeters in diameter is commonplace for a suspension bridge). In the long term, however, it's fair to wonder whether carbon nanotube (NT) cables will not supplant their metallic counterparts.
2.1 Passive cables
The exceptional mechanical properties of carbon NT have already been mentioned, but this is not enough to make a good cable. While it's relatively easy to draw a kilometer of wire, it's difficult to obtain a millimeter...
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Passive and active cables, guy wires and tie rods
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