by Joshua A.C. Newman » Mon Sep 10, 2012 10:10 pm
Alloys are metals combined with other materials. Steel is iron and carbon. Bronze is copper and silicon. Titanium is usually actually titanium and iron.
Obsidian is a glass; that is, a silicate. Could you make an iron/silicon alloy? I don't know! Let's ask the Internet!
It's sure not a mighty industrial steel, though.
So, you want something amazingly flexible? Or you want a material that's super hard? Those are usually in opposition; speaking of Japanese steel, part of what makes it work (as well as some really neato Viking steel) is case hardening: that is, the edge (which has to be hard to keep an edge) is allowed to cool slowly (making coherent, rigid, well-formed crystals) while the rest of the blade is cooled quickly (making half-formed, flexible, amorphous crystals). Voilá! Hard and flexible!
Titanium's neatotude comes from its extraordinarily high modulus of flexibility; that is, many alloys can be bent waaaay out of shape before they will stop snapping back. It's not very hard, though; it's resistant to cutting because it has very low heat conductivity, which makes it sticky at high heat. It's also flammable, which is pretty exciting.
Where the real action is at is with composite materials; that is, materials with different characteristics bonded together on a macroscopic level. Carbon fiber, fiberglass, bamboo fiber, and other such materials work well because you put the fibers in the direction where they work the best (oddly, in compression most of the time) and then hold them in place by soaking them with a resin that keeps them from delaminating when they flex. You can then cover those with a piece of, say, titanium (flexy) and ceramic scales (hard and with a high specific heat) to get a hard, flexible, heat-resistant plate.