Mechanical properties of crossed-lamellar structures in biological shells: A review.
Journal article

Mechanical properties of crossed-lamellar structures in biological shells: A review.

  • Li XW Department of Materials Physics and Chemistry and Key Laboratory for Anisotropy and Texture of Materials (Ministry of Education), School of Material Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, PR China. Electronic address: xwli@mail.neu.edu.cn.
  • Ji HM Department of Materials Physics and Chemistry and Key Laboratory for Anisotropy and Texture of Materials (Ministry of Education), School of Material Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, PR China; Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5B 2K3.
  • Yang W Department of Materials Physics and Chemistry and Key Laboratory for Anisotropy and Texture of Materials (Ministry of Education), School of Material Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, PR China; Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, PR China; Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 5, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland.
  • Zhang GP Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, PR China.
  • Chen DL Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5B 2K3.
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  • 2017-05-28
Published in:
  • Journal of the mechanical behavior of biomedical materials. - 2017
English The self-fabrication of materials in nature offers an alternate and powerful solution towards the grand challenge of designing advanced structural materials, where strength and toughness are always mutually exclusive. Crossed-lamellar structures are the most common microstructures in mollusks that are composed of aragonites and a small amount of organic materials. Such a distinctive composite structure has a fracture toughness being much higher than that of pure carbonate mineral. These structures exhibiting complex hierarchical microarchitectures that span several sub-level lamellae from microscale down to nanoscale, can be grouped into two types, i.e., platelet-like and fiber-like crossed-lamellar structures based on the shapes of basic building blocks. It has been demonstrated that these structures have a great potential to strengthen themselves during deformation. The observed underlying toughening mechanisms include microcracking, channel cracking, interlocking, uncracked-ligament bridging, aragonite fiber bridging, crack deflection and zig-zag, etc., which play vital roles in enhancing the fracture resistance of shells with the crossed-lamellar structures. The exploration and utilization of these important toughening mechanisms have attracted keen interests of materials scientists since they pave the way for the development of bio-inspired advanced composite materials for load-bearing structural applications. This article is aimed to review the characteristics of hierarchical structures and the mechanical properties of two kinds of crossed-lamellar structures, and further summarize the latest advances and biomimetic applications based on the unique crossed-lamellar structures.
Language
  • English
Open access status
closed
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https://sonar.ch/global/documents/199762
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