Researchers' Formula Predicts Strength, Stiffness, and Toughness of Composites

To materials scientists and engineers, stiffness, toughness, and strength are distinct and important mechanical properties. Strength is the ability of a material to stay together when stretched or compressed; stiffness is how well a material resists deformation; and toughness is the ability of a material to absorb energy before failure. Mother-of-pearl - the iridescent layer in the shells of some mollusks - has inspired a Rice University study that will help scientists and engineers judge the ultimate strength, stiffness, and toughness of composite materials for anything from nanoscale electronics to buildings. The Rice University researchers created universal maps that predict the properties of natural and biomimetic platelet-matrix composites (like mother-of-pearl) and synthetic stacks of materials like graphene. The formula relies on four characteristics of the individual materials under consideration for a composite: their length, a ratio based on their respective stiffness, their plasticity, and how they overlap. The team says their findings will work as well for materials built with nanoscale blocks as they would for a brick wall, or larger.

Transcript

00:00:00 [Music] you see a seashell we see a teaching tool Nature has a particular structure that creates such a lightweight composite with excellent mechanical properties such as high strength and high toughness properties that don't typically coexist in man-made materials even so several efforts have been devoted to mimic Nature's structure

00:00:29 there have been no clear design guidelines that could possibly provide a predictive design strategy to minimize expensive trial and error approaches however we have been able to create a design map that clearly shows us how to combine V various materials and structures to build artificial nature moreover this map allows us to nearly exhaust the full capacity of the

00:00:51 composit component for the best Synergy in the ultimate mechanical properties this material has something inside it that is very interesting to us it is called maker and it is found in the inner layer part of this seashell it provides the balance between different mechanical properties that's a question we've been answering in this research how to make materials in a way

00:01:16 to balance different mechanical properties such as stiffness such as strength and toughness so to validate our theortical predictions we created several pled matric composite with different dimensions and and different uh materials and by pulling them in the shear mode we're able to prove our Theory and where they break thus

00:01:38 providing further validation for our design Maps our map has a significant impact in altering the bioinspired material design landscape and is also applicable to a wide range of composits used in Auto industry Aerospace industry and construction materials