Bioinspired designs for shock absorption, based upon nacre and Bouligand structures

Abstract

Biological materials such as nacre, found in mollusk shells and Bouligand structures, found in the armor of many arthropods, exhibit values of toughness that are much higher than their constituent materials. This is achieved via specific arrangements and combinations of natural materials. In all biomimetic studies seen in literature so far, any one type of material alone is chosen for mimicry. The present work aims to create a set of biomimetic designs that incorporate macroscopic features of both nacre and Bouligand structures, so as to achieve toughness amplification in the given material. Finite element analysis (FEA) of relevant geometric designs are initially performed using ABAQUS software and experimental validation of the most promising model (which was found to show a 46.15% improvement over the reference model) is done. The testing method selected for both simulations as well as experiment is the Charpy impact test (ASTM E23).