Researchers Develop Self-Healing Plastic 71
schliz writes "Arizona State researchers have been working on a 'self-healing' polymer that uses a fibre optic 'nervous system' to detect and fix cracks. The system recovers up to 96 percent of an object's original strength in laboratory tests. It could find use in 'large-scale composite structures for which human intervention would be difficult,' such as wind turbines, satellites, aircraft, or the Mars Rover."
Not really self healing. (Score:5, Informative)
It just grows stronger and returns to its original shape when cracked. A clean break would not be able to be healed. And that "repair" will fail if they ever turn off the lights in the fiber optics because the crack is still there and the strengthened plastic near the crack will cool back down.