Originally Posted by
Towlie
Your question raises another question: Why?
It seems like it is kinda going about design in reverse. It makes sense to identify a material with superior mechanical properties (titanium, certain grades of steel and aluminum, composites, beryllium, etc.), and then determine how best to utilize it in a frame to harness its properties. But PVC is just kinda flimsy and has no particularly desirable properties, so it wouldn't make much sense from a design perspective to "make it work." Raw, I would guess based on practical experience that it would make a usable but not very good frame, either being too heavy to obtain the desired strength or being too flimsy to obtain the desired weight. The way you could make it stronger is to reinforce it with fibers or particles, as in the case of carbon-fiber (which is carbon-reinforced plastic) or metal-matrix composite, but that has already been done with better matrix materials than PVC.