Damage-tolerant material design motif derived from asymmetrical rotation

Wei Wang; Shu Jian Chen; Weiqiang Chen; Wenhui Duan; Jia Zie Lai; Kwesi Sagoe-Crentsil

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-28991-5

Damage-tolerant material design motif derived from asymmetrical rotation

Nat Commun. 2022 Mar 11;13(1):1289. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-28991-5.

Authors

Wei Wang^#^{1

2}, Shu Jian Chen^#³, Weiqiang Chen⁴, Wenhui Duan⁵, Jia Zie Lai¹, Kwesi Sagoe-Crentsil¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Civil Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, 3800, Australia.
² School of Civil Engineering, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia.
³ School of Civil Engineering, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia. shujian.chen@uq.edu.au.
⁴ Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, School of Engineering, The University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom.
⁵ Department of Civil Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, 3800, Australia. wenhui.duan@monash.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Motifs extracted from nature can lead to significant advances in materials design and have been used to tackle the apparent exclusivity between strength and damage tolerance of brittle materials. Here we present a segmental design motif found in arthropod exoskeleton, in which asymmetrical rotational degree of freedom is used in damage control in contrast to the conventional interfacial shear failure mechanism of existing design motifs. We realise this design motif in a compression-resisting lightweight brittle material, demonstrating a unique progressive failure behaviour that preserves material integrity with 60-80% of load-bearing capacity at >50% of compressive strain. This rotational degree of freedom further enables a periodic energy absorbance pattern during failure yielding 200% higher strength than the corresponding cellular structure and up to 97.9% reduction of post-damage residual stress compared with ductile materials. Fifty material combinations covering 27 types of materials analysed display potential progressive failure behaviour by this design motif, thereby establishing a broad spectrum of potential applications of the design motif for advanced materials design, energy storage/conversion and architectural structures.