Bioinspired hierarchical impact tolerant materials

Abstract

The quest for new light-weight materials with superior mechanical properties is a goal of materials scientists and engineers worldwide. A promising route in this pursuit is drawing inspiration from nature to design and develop materials with enhanced properties. By emulating the graded mineral content and hierarchical structure of fish scales of the Arapaima gigas from the nano to macro scales, we were able to develop bioinspired laminated composites with improved impact resistance. Activated by the addition of nano-particles of Al 2 O 3 and nano-layers of TiN to a thermoplastic fiber substrate, new energy dissipation mechanisms operating at the nanoscale enhanced the energy absorption and stiffness of the bioinspired material. Remarkably, the newly developed materials are easily transferred to the industry with minimum associated manufacturing costs.

Fish Scales and Their Biomimetic Applications

“…rate of puncture loadings, while being close to the head region in the fish (Ghods et al, 2018). Dimensionally, arapaima scale thickness range approximately 1,600 µm, constituting 600 µm of its limiting layer and the remaining 1,000 µm of elasmoid region containing an orthogonal arrangement of fibers in stacks ranging between 30 and 60 µm in ply thickness with each fiber of lamella of 1 µm of diameter and each small fibril of approximately 100 nm in diameter or even smaller (Estrada et al, 2020). The phenomenon when these collagen fibers undergo tensile loading has previously been described to slide and reorient in a different direction, and this reorientation mechanism was studied using the X-ray diffraction method where the fibers tend to straighten themselves in the axis of tensile stress because of each individual fibril slides and stretches in the direction of tension (Zimmerman et al, 2013) and enabling them to undergo excessive strains without failure (Sherman et al, 2017).…”

A Review of Impact Resistant Biological and Bioinspired Materials and Structures

“…In the world of impact resistance, hierarchical materials have been similarly successful. Estrada et al [100] constructed hierarchical laminar organic fibrous composites with graded mineralization based on Arapaima scales and found significant improvements in energy absorption under impact. Jia et al [101] show that using higher orders of self-similar hierarchies allowed for the improvement of stiffness, strength, and toughness simultaneously, while also confining damage to smaller length scales under dynamic loading.…”

Energy Absorption and Ballistic Performance of Epoxy Composite Reinforced with Arapaima Scales

“…Other natural fibrous materials, such as some fish scales, might be considered as novel alternatives for reinforcement in polymer composites [ 15 ]. Through thousands of years of evolutionary processes, nature has produced materials with extremely damage-resistant structures, which protect their owners from predators while still being lightweight and enabling mobility [ 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ]. South American named pirarucu or worldwide known arapaima ( Arapaima gigas ) is a well-known fish, native to the Amazon basin, and considered one of the world’s largest freshwater fish [ 20 ].…”