Bob
24th December 2010, 01:13
French company ESquad has created protective biker jeans, using a material originally created for use in space.
Pierre-Henry Servajean began his search for the ideal material after suffering an accident while wearing conventional denim jeans. He said “I realised everything I had on my body was perfect – my helmet, gloves, jacket – except the jeans. I had suitable things for every part of my body, except my legs.”
Ultimately, he found Ultra high molecular weight polyethylene’ (UHMWPE) – a material featuring fibres twice as strong as Kevlar, and 10-100 times stronger than steel. UHMWPE is so strong but light, that it was originally employed as part of ESA’s microgravity mission where they dangled a small re-entry capsule in orbit from a line just half a millimetre thick made of the material, some 30 kilometres in length!
Servajean’s company ESquad has created a fabric by taking the fibres and wrapping them in cotton, so combining the existing quality of jeans with the strength of UHMWPE. To demonstrate the strength of the new fabric, he suspended a 2700kg Hummer from a pair of the jeans.
For more information: http://esquad.fr/
Pierre-Henry Servajean began his search for the ideal material after suffering an accident while wearing conventional denim jeans. He said “I realised everything I had on my body was perfect – my helmet, gloves, jacket – except the jeans. I had suitable things for every part of my body, except my legs.”
Ultimately, he found Ultra high molecular weight polyethylene’ (UHMWPE) – a material featuring fibres twice as strong as Kevlar, and 10-100 times stronger than steel. UHMWPE is so strong but light, that it was originally employed as part of ESA’s microgravity mission where they dangled a small re-entry capsule in orbit from a line just half a millimetre thick made of the material, some 30 kilometres in length!
Servajean’s company ESquad has created a fabric by taking the fibres and wrapping them in cotton, so combining the existing quality of jeans with the strength of UHMWPE. To demonstrate the strength of the new fabric, he suspended a 2700kg Hummer from a pair of the jeans.
For more information: http://esquad.fr/