New discovery in animal exoskeletons leads to advances in designing construction materials

Date:
April 7, 2022
Source:
Monash University
Summary:
Researchers have discovered a new design motif derived from the
rigid external covering of invertebrates that may help create more
damage tolerant materials for future building and construction.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Researchers from Monash University have discovered a new design motif
derived from the rigid external covering of invertebrates that may
help create more damage tolerant materials for future building and construction.


==========================================================================
In a paper published in Nature Communications, Professor Wenhui Duan
from the Department of Civil Engineering at Monash University says the
new pattern, adding to the eight known and common biological structural
design patterns, can add a high strength motif to commonly used building materials such as composites and cement, and may help reduce carbon
emissions.

The cement industry is one of the largest producers of carbon dioxide,
creating up to 8% of worldwide human-made emissions of this gas; this
discovery will assist in reducing the use of cement by improving the
material's damage tolerance.

The research team replicated the design motif in cement material, one
of the most consumed construction materials in the world. They adopted
a 3D printing technique combined with nanotechnology and artificial intelligence to fabricate a lightweight cement composite which adopted
this segmental design motif, demonstrating a superior load-bearing
capacity and a unique progressive failure pattern.

"We demonstrated the application of this design motif in producing a
high strength, damage tolerant lightweight cement material. In addition,
this design motif can also be applied to various materials such as
ceramic, glass, polymeric and metallic materials for advanced materials
design, energy storage/ conversion and architectural structures, in collaboration with the teams from University of Queensland and University
of Manchester," says Professor Duan.

Since the 1972 discovery of the helical structure, one of the most common structural patterns in biology, there has been a drive to extract design
motifs from more than 7 million living species in the world to aid the fabrication of structured/structural materials.

After almost 50 years of research, remarkable repetitions have been
confirmed in most classes of species but only eight categories of
design motifs have ever been extracted and adopted in materials design,
until now.

The new design structure has been identified in various species such
as the exoskeletons of arthropods, the legs of mammals, amphibians and reptiles. These design motifs are valuable sources of inspiration for
modern materials design and aid the fabrication of structural material.

"Compared to the current design motif, our segmental design motif
dissipates the energy by segment rotation. The beauty of our discovered
design motif is that the material can exhibit a unique periodic
progressive failure behaviour.

It means we can contain the damage within a particular region of material, while the rest of the structure can still maintain the integrity and most (around 80%) of load-bearing capacity."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Monash_University. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Wei Wang, Shu Jian Chen, Weiqiang Chen, Wenhui Duan, Jia Zie
Lai, Kwesi
Sagoe-Crentsil. Damage-tolerant material design motif derived from
asymmetrical rotation. Nature Communications, 2022; 13 (1) DOI:
10.1038/ s41467-022-28991-5 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220407101112.htm

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