Abstract
The porous structure in pomelo peel is believed to be responsible for the protection of its fruit from damage during the free falling from a tree. The quantitative understanding of the relationship between the deformation behavior and the porous structure could pave the way for the design of porous structures for efficient energy absorption. Here, a universal feature of pore distribution in pomelo peels along the radial direction is extracted from three varieties of pomelos, which shows strong correlation to the deformation behavior of the peels under compression. Guided by the porous design found in pomelo peels, porous polyether-ether-ketone (PEEK) cube is additively manufactured and possesses the highest ability to absorb energy during compression as compared to the non-pomelo-inspired geometries, which is further confirmed by the finite element simulation. The nature-optimized porous structure revealed here could guide the design of lightweight and high-energy-dissipating materials/devices.
Highlights
Porous structures are abundant in nature and play an essential role in the adaptation of organisms to their living environments [1,2,3]
During the compression of fresh and dehydrated pomelo peels, the linear elastic regime is followed by nonlinear behavior with no noticeable plateau that can be clearly identified [17]
The elastic moduli for PSY, STY and TK increased to 0.73 MPa ± 0.15 MPa, 0.56 Mpa ± 0.15 MPa and 2.24 MPa ± 0.72 MPa, respectively (Fig. 1c), which is consistent with the fact that dried foods are normally stiffer than the fresh ones [18, 19]
Summary
Porous structures are abundant in nature and play an essential role in the adaptation of organisms to their living environments [1,2,3]. The porous structure in pomelo peels is considered to be responsible for the ability of energy absorption [5,6,7,8,9,10]. A quantitative understanding of how the porous structure enables the high energy absorption across different pomelo varieties remains missing. Pioneering effects have been carried out to understand the porous structure in pomelo peels. Thielen et al [9] reported the distribution of cell number over the radial thickness of a peel in the pomelo and found the lowest and highest cell density at the locations of 66.7% and 95.2% away from the juicy pulp, respectively. Bührig-Polaczek et al [4] proposed that fluid-filled struts and a density gradient in the middle of the peel (mesocarp) could be the key factor for the uniform collapse of the peel under quasi-static
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