Abstract
The development of lightweight structures exhibiting a high energy dissipation capacity and a locally adapted puncture resistance is of increasing interest in building construction. As discussed in Chap. 7, inspiration can be found in biology, as numerous examples exist that have evolved one or even several of these properties. Major challenges in this interdisciplinary approach, i.e. the transfer of biological principles to building constructional elements, are scaling (different dimensions) and (at least for the botanic examples) the fact that different material classes constitute the structural basis for the functions of interest. Therefore, a mathematical description of the mechanical properties and the scalability is required that is applicable for both biological and technical materials. A basic requisite for the establishment of mathematical descriptions are well-defined test setups rendering a reliable data basis. In the following, two biological role models from the animal and plant kingdoms are presented, namely, sea urchin spines and coconut endocarp, and two experimental setups for quasi-static and dynamic testing of biological and bio-inspired technical materials are discussed.
Keywords
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Andrews EW, Gioux G, Onck P, Gibson LJ (2001) Size effects in ductile cellular solids. Part II: experimental results. Int J Mech Sci 43(3):701–713
Bauer G, Schmier S, Thielen M, Speck T (2015) Energy dissipation in plants – from puncture resistant seed coats to impact resistant tree barks. In: Yamamoto H, Morita M, Gril J (eds) Proceedings of the 8th plant biomechanics conference, Nagoya, Japan, pp 190–195
Bažant ZP (2000) Size effect. Int J Solids Struct 37(1):69–80
Bažant ZP (2004) Scaling theory for quasibrittle structural failure. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 101(37):13400–13407
Chan E, Elevitch CR (2006) Cocos nucifera (coconut). Species Profiles for Pacific Island Agroforestry 2:1–27
Chan YL, Ngan AHW, King NM (2009) Use of focused ion beam milling for investigating the mechanical properties of biological tissues: a study of human primary molars. J Mech Behav Biomed 2(4):375–383
Danzer R (2014) On the relationship between ceramic strength and the requirements for mechanical design. J Eur Ceram Soc 34(15):3435–3460
Danzer R, Supancic P, Pascual J, Lube T (2007) Fracture statistics of ceramics–Weibull statistics and deviations from Weibull statistics. Eng Fract Mech 74(18):2919–2932
Franke E, Lieberei R, Reisdorff C (2012) Nutzpflanzen. Georg Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart
Griffith AA (1921) The phenomena of rupture and flow in solids. Phil Trans R Soc A 221:163–198
Grossmann JN, Nebelsick JH (2013) Comparative morphological and structural analysis of selected cidaroid and camarodont sea urchin spines. Zoomorphology 132(3):301–315
Krumbholz M, Hieronymus CF, Burchardt S, Troll VR, Tanner DC, Friese N (2014) Weibull-distributed dyke thickness reflects probabilistic character of host-rock strength. Nat Commun 5:3272
Kumar PS, Ramachandra S, Ramamurty U (2003) Effect of displacement-rate on the indentation behavior of an aluminum foam. Mater Sci Eng A 347(1):330–337
Lawn B (1993) Fracture of brittle solids. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Łysiak G (2007) Fracture toughness of pea: Weibull analysis. J Food Eng 83(3):436–443
Menig R, Meyers MH, Meyers MA, Vecchio KS (2000) Quasi-static and dynamic mechanical response of Haliotis rufescens (abalone) shells. Acta Mater 48(9):2383–2398
Mouginot R, Maugis D (1985) Fracture indentation beneath flat and spherical punches. J Mater Sci 20(12):4354–4376
Moureaux C, Pérez-Huerta A, Compère P, Zhu W, Leloup T, Cusack M, Dubois P (2010) Structure, composition and mechanical relations to function in sea urchin spine. J Struct Biol 170(1):41–49
Olurin OB, Fleck NA, Ashby MF (2000) Indentation resistance of an aluminium foam. Scr Mater 43(11):983–989
Presser V, Schultheiß S, Berthold C, Nickel KG (2009) Sea urchin spines as a model-system for permeable, light-weight ceramics with graceful failure behavior. Part I. Mechanical behavior of sea urchin spines under compression. J Bionic Eng 6(3):203–213
Seto J, Ma Y, Davis SA, Meldrum F, Gourrier A, Kim YY, Schilde U, Sztucki M, Burghammer M, Maltsev S, Jäger C, Cölfen H (2012) Structure-property relationships of a biological mesocrystal in the adult sea urchin spine. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 109(10):3699–3704
Su X, Kamat S, Heuer AH (2000) The structure of sea urchin spines, large biogenic single crystals of calcite. J Mater Sci 35(22):5545–5551
Taylor D (2000) Scaling effects in the fatigue strength of bones from different animals. J Theor Biol 206(2):299–306
Wagermaier W, Klaushofer K, Fratzl P (2015) Fragility of bone material controlled by internal interfaces. Calcif Tissue Int 97(3):201–212
Weibull W (1939) A statistical theory of the strength of materials. Generalstabens litografiska anstalts förlag, Stockholm
Weibull W (1951) A statistical distribution function of wide applicability. J Appl Mech 18:293–297
Winton AL (1901) Anatomy of the fruit of Cocos nucifera. Am J Sci 70:265–280
Yang F, Li JC (2013) Impression test—a review. Mat Sci Eng R 74(8):233–253
Yu HY, Imam MA, Rath BB (1985) Study of the deformation behaviour of homogeneous materials by impression tests. J Mater Sci 20(2):636–642
Acknowledgements
This work has been funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the Transregional Collaborative Research Centre (SFB/Transregio) 141 ‘Biological Design and Integrative Structures’/project B01 ‘Scaling of Properties of Highly Porous Biological and Biomimetic Constructions’. The Plant Biomechanics Group Freiburg also thanks E. Heizmann and UNIVEG Freiburg, Germany, for providing the coconuts.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schmier, S. et al. (2016). Developing the Experimental Basis for an Evaluation of Scaling Properties of Brittle and ‘Quasi-Brittle’ Biological Materials. In: Knippers, J., Nickel, K., Speck, T. (eds) Biomimetic Research for Architecture and Building Construction. Biologically-Inspired Systems, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46374-2_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46374-2_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-46372-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-46374-2
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)