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Fish scales are laminated composites that consist of plies of unidirectional collagen fibrils with twisted-plywood stacking arrangement. Owing to their composition, the toughness of scales is dependent on the intermolecular bonding within and between the collagen fibrils. Adjusting the extent of this bonding with an appropriate stimulus has implications for the design of next-generation bioinspired flexible armours. In this investigation, scales were exposed to environments of water or a polar solvent (i.e. ethanol) to influence the extent of intermolecular bonding, and their mechanical behaviour was evaluated in uniaxial tension and transverse puncture. Results showed that the resistance to failure of the scales increased with loading rate in both tension and puncture and that the polar solvent treatment increased both the strength and toughness through interpeptide bonding; the largest increase occurred in the puncture resistance of scales from the tail region (a factor of nearly 7×). The increase in strength and damage tolerance with stronger intermolecular bonding is uncommon for structural materials and is a unique characteristic of the low mineral content. Scales from regions of the body with higher mineral content underwent less strengthening, which is most likely the result of interference posed by the mineral crystals to intermolecular bonding. Overall, the results showed that flexible bioinspired composite materials for puncture resistance should enrol constituents and complementary processing that capitalize on interfibril bonds.

Metal additive manufacturing (AM) is being rapidly adopted in the aerospace and biomedical industries. Powder bed fusion AM processes are leading this trend. To maximize process economy, excess ''unmelted'' powder retrieved from the build chamber is used in subsequent build cycles. The metal properties and component reliability could undergo degradation with powder reuse. This study investigates the effects of powder reuse on fracture surface characteristics of Ti6Al4V specimens fabricated by electron beam melting AM over 30 sequential build cycles. Optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy were used to evaluate the changes in fracture surface features of tensile failures with powder reuse. Macroscopically, slant fractures were most common in early builds, which transitioned to orthogonal fracture surfaces with poorly defined shear lips with increasing reuse. Regardless of the build number, the fracture origins were consistently from the as-built surfaces. Microscopically, ductile features such as micro-void coalescence were evident throughout the 30 build cycles. However, increasing flute content with reuse suggests that rising oxygen levels causes solution strengthening and limits the participation of active slip systems. These results highlight the importance of surface roughness and powder oxidation to metal performance in AM, and the evolution of fractographic features with powder reuse.