Bioinspired Design Criteria for Damage-Resistant Materials with Periodically Varying Microstructure

Abstract

Many biological materials, such as bone, nacre, or certain deep-sea glass sponges, have a hierarchical structure that makes them stiff, tough, and damage tolerant. Different structural features contributing to these exceptional properties have been identified, but a common motif of these materials, the periodic arrangement of structural components with strongly varying stiffness, has not gained sufficient attention. Here we show that the periodicity of the material properties is one of the dominant reasons for the high fracture resistance of these structures and their tolerance to short cracks. If the composite architecture fulfills certain design rules, which are derived in this paper, the stiff structure becomes fracture resistant and, most of all, flaw tolerant. This architectural criterion inspired from nature provides useful guidelines for the design of defect-tolerant resistant man-made materials.