Abstract
Silks are of significant interest to scientists and the public due to their high specific strength and unsurpassed toughness. The study of their properties and formulation of physically-based models is ongoing in the biomaterials community. Interesting models and simulation data are appearing in the literature but there is a paucity of experimental data at high strain-rate or high frequency. To remedy this, high strain-rate characterisation has been undertaken alongside conventional low-rate tests, under a range of conditions. The methods reported here represent large-strain, high-rate, i.e. transverse impact; and small-strain, high-rate, i.e. vibration. Both have relevance to the use of silk in nature by organisms (protection, predation and communication) and the application/imitation of silk by materials scientists. Here we report the methodology and results to date in our investigations on silkworm and orb weaver silks.
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Acknowledgements
This research is supported by The Leverhulme Trust (F/08705/D), the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (F49620-03-1-0111), the European Research Council (SP2-GA-2008-233409) and Magdalen College. Prof. David Porter and Prof. Fritz Vollrath are thanked for insightful comments and suggestions. The authors are grateful to Richard Duffin and the workshop at the Department of Engineering Science for their invaluable contributions to the design and execution of experiments.
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Drodge, D.R., Mortimer, B., Siviour, C.R., Holland, C. (2014). Hierarchical Bionanomaterials Under the Hammer: High-Rate Response of Silks. In: Barthelat, F., Zavattieri, P., Korach, C., Prorok, B., Grande-Allen, K. (eds) Mechanics of Biological Systems and Materials, Volume 4. Conference Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Mechanics Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00777-9_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00777-9_10
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