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Strength and toughness of biocomposites consisting of soft and hard elements: A few fundamental models

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2015

Ko Okumura*
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Ochanomizu University, Japan; okumura@phys.ocha.ac.jp

Abstract

Certain biocomposites exploit the combination of soft and hard elements to achieve high strength and toughness. In nacre, found inside certain seashells or on the surface of pearls, hard layers of micron-scale thickness are glued together by thin layers of soft proteins to realize remarkable strength and toughness. In spider webs, stiffer radial threads are connected by softer spiral threads to produce a light and resistant structure. In the exoskeleton of lobsters, organic fibers form a chiral structure in an inorganic matrix. This article reviews progress in the understanding of the mechanical superiority of such soft-hard biocomposites. In particular, simple physical views are presented that allow an intuitive understanding of how their remarkable structures contribute to enhancing their fracture resistance in the presence of cracks, and how such structures are physically optimized in terms of mechanical properties. Such fundamental insights could be useful as guiding principles for developing artificial, reinforced materials.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2015
Figure 0

Figure 1. (a) Scanning electron microscope image of the section of nacre. The thickness of hard layers is approximately 0.5 µm. Because the soft layers are extremely thin (approximately 25 nm), they cannot be seen. (b) Illustration of a simplified model of nacre with a crack and structure parameters in the model. The left-hand illustration is drawn on the scale of layered structure, while the right-hand is drawn on the sample scale. (c) Stress distribution under the presence of a line crack in a plate of nacre (left) and a monolith of the hard element of nacre (right) with an intensity scale (middle), obtained by finite element calculations. Stress concentration near the crack tips is significantly reduced in nacre. (d) The top plot shows stress distribution around the right crack tip (b) of a horizontal line crack. Stress values are more reduced for smaller ε (the case ε = ε0 corresponds to real nacre). The bottom plot shows collapse of the same data by rescaling of the axes, confirming the validity of the scaling law shown in the panel. (e) Crack shape near the tip (left) and collapse of the data (right), confirming the scaling law shown in the panel. The plots show that the deformation is more enhanced for smaller ε0. (a) Courtesy of Prof. Dinesh Katti. (c–e) Created from data in Reference 37.

Figure 1

Figure 2. (a) Illustration of the spiral structure of cuticle layers in the exoskeleton of lobsters, generated by Mathematica 10 software. The layers are numbered from 0 to 18. (b) Original spiral structure (left), and its simplified layered structure (right) when the sample is stretched in the specified direction. The layer numbers correspond to those in (a). (c) Scanning electron microscope image of outer and inner spiral structures (exocuticle and endocuticle) with different spiral pitches, observed in the exoskeleton of lobsters. (c) Reproduced with permission from Reference 41. © 2009 Wiley.

Figure 2

Figure 3. (a–b) Force distribution in a simple model of spider webs under tension. The ratio of radial thread and spiral thread spring constants (multiplied by the length) of (a) and (b) are K/k = 1 and 10, respectively. The maximum force FM that appears at the edge radial thread is smaller in (b), which suggests that real webs (corresponding to [b]) are stronger than artificial webs in which K is comparable to k. (c) Summary of parameters in the model spider web. (d–f) The maximum force FM as a function of K/k, the number of radial threads N, and the number of spiral threads M, respectively. The three plots show that higher K/k values are mechanically advantageous. (a–b) and (d–f) Created from data in Reference 71.