Damage-tolerant material design motif derived from asymmetrical rotation

Wei Wang,Shu Jian Chen,Wenhui Duan,Weiqiang Chen,Kwesi Sagoe-Crentsil,Jia Zie Lai

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-28991-5

Wei Wang, Shu Jian Chen + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28991-5

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Abstract

Motifs extracted from nature can lead to significant advances in materials design and have been used to tackle the apparent exclusivity between strength and damage tolerance of brittle materials. Here we present a segmental design motif found in arthropod exoskeleton, in which asymmetrical rotational degree of freedom is used in damage control in contrast to the conventional interfacial shear failure mechanism of existing design motifs. We realise this design motif in a compression-resisting lightweight brittle material, demonstrating a unique progressive failure behaviour that preserves material integrity with 60–80% of load-bearing capacity at >50% of compressive strain. This rotational degree of freedom further enables a periodic energy absorbance pattern during failure yielding 200% higher strength than the corresponding cellular structure and up to 97.9% reduction of post-damage residual stress compared with ductile materials. Fifty material combinations covering 27 types of materials analysed display potential progressive failure behaviour by this design motif, thereby establishing a broad spectrum of potential applications of the design motif for advanced materials design, energy storage/conversion and architectural structures.

Highlights

Motifs extracted from nature can lead to significant advances in materials design and have been used to tackle the apparent exclusivity between strength and damage tolerance of brittle materials
Loadbearing capacity, failure mode and extent of applicability of the motif’s implementation are investigated and characterised via mechanical testing coupled with X-ray micro-computed tomography, microscopic morphological examination, quantitative nanomechanical mapping and large-scale discrete element method (DEM) simulations
A material design motif is extracted from the segmental exoskeleton structure of the arthropod

Summary

Results

X-ray micro-CT scans (Fig. 2f–i) showed that an asymmetrical coating can be effectively formed in a similar fashion as on a U-shaped scaffold After tuning both the scaffold design and the fluid properties, a thickness of the coating of 400–800 micrometres at the centre of the windows and 600–1000 micrometres at the level of the joints was achieved. A list of typical materials that can potentially be implemented with the segmental design is presented, e which includes the commonly used (quasi-) brittle materials for coatings (e.g. cementitious material, ceramic, glass) and ductile materials for scaffold (e.g. polymer, metal). Based on the very wide applicability demonstrated here, highly promising follow-up explorations are expected to discover a generation of material combinations and implementation methods of this design motif

28 FC 720 32 ASA 33 PET 34 PETG 38 PEI 40 LDPE 53 Ti6Al4V

Methods

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