Numerical Modeling of Damage Tolerant Biological Material

Abstract

Biomineralized materials have the ability to employ high volume fraction of modest and brittle materials and still exhibit surprising mechanical performance. Decoding the structure-function relationship of these materials is a challenging task that requires knowledge about the actual loading and environmental conditions of the material in their natural habitat, as well as a complete characterization of their constituents and hierarchical ultrastructure through the use of modern tools such as in-situ electron microscopy, small-scale mechanical testing capabilities, prototyping, and advanced numerical models. In turn, this provides the necessary tools for the design and fabrication of biomimetic materials with remarkable properties. In this work, we will review some of our research activities covering the numerical aspects of fracture and damage in naturally occurring and biomimetic materials, including biomineralized materials found in hyper-mineralized exosqueleton of mantis shrimps. In our approach, we adopt a finite element methodology that uses a cohesive approach to brittle and quasi-brittle fracture in the mineral.