Manufacture and Mechanics of Topologically Interlocked Material Assemblies

Abstract

Topologically interlocked material (TIM) systems are load-carrying assemblies of unit elements interacting by contact and friction. TIM assemblies have emerged as a class of architectured materials with mechanical properties not ordinarily found in monolithic solids. These properties include, but are not limited to, high damage tolerance, damage confinement, adaptability, and multifunctionality. The review paper provides an overview of recent research findings on TIM manufacturing and TIM mechanics. We review several manufacturing approaches. Assembly manufacturing processes employ the concept of scaffold as a unifying theme. Scaffolds are understood as auxiliary support structures employed in the manufacturing of TIM systems. It is demonstrated that the scaffold can take multiple forms. Alternatively, processes of segmentation are discussed and demonstrated. The review on mechanical property characteristics links the manufacturing approaches to several relevant material configurations and details recent findings on quasi-static and impact loading, and on multifunctional response.

Simultaneous improvements of strength and toughness in topologically interlocked ceramics

“…Architectured materials include the now well-studied lattice materials which contain only a small fraction of solid (10). In contrast, the less-studied dense architectured materials are fully solid and are made of building blocks of well-defined size and shape, arranged in two or three dimensions (11,12). The geometry and arrangement of the blocks can be designed to generate interlocking in "topologically interlocked materials" (TIMs) without the need for adhesive or mortar, a powerful concept pioneered by Estrin and coworkers (13)(14)(15)(16).…”

“…For example, the frictional sliding of the blocks on one another can dissipate energy and confer TIMs with very high impact resistance compared with monolithic panels of the same materials, a strategy which can be used to overcome brittleness of glasses and ceramics. However, improvements in impact resistance and energy absorption are achieved at the expense of 40-80% losses in strength (11,20,25,27,29). Despite recent efforts in unifying designs (30)(31)(32) and optimization (33,34), there are still no comprehensive guidelines to select optimum architectures for given applications and requirements.…”

Short review on architectured materials with topological interlocking mechanisms

“…The major advantage of TIM is probably their behavior in fracture and their high tolerance for failure of individual building blocks. The crack behavior depends mainly on the structure of the interlocking blocks rather than on the material itself, and ductile fracture behavior can be obtained with building blocks made of brittle materials like glass, ice, ceramic, concrete, or polymer . For example, Figure B shows the force‐displacement curves for a plate indentation experiment (Figure A), comparing plain glass with TIM‐architectured glass with truncated tetrahedron building blocks (Figure E).…”

“…The crack behavior depends mainly on the structure of the interlocking blocks rather than on the material itself, and ductile fracture behavior can be obtained with building blocks made of brittle materials like glass, 22 ice, 16 ceramic, 13 concrete, 23 or polymer. 24,25 For example, Figure 2B shows the force-displacement curves for a plate indentation experiment (Figure 2A), comparing plain glass with TIM-architectured glass with truncated tetrahedron building blocks ( Figure 1E). Although made of the same material, the TIM-architectured glass accommodates large deformations through relative small movements of each building block, including sliding and rotation of the blocks.…”

External fields for the fabrication of highly mineralized hierarchical architectures

“…3-D shaped particles have infinite possibility of shapes, axis number, and orientations but are seldom available in large quantities and are less likely to be used to fabricate bulk and highly mineralized materials. Despite the evidence that such building blocks offer a large interest to yield new deformation mechanisms and properties, 60 their orientation in space will need to be considered for each individual geometry and is beyond the scope of this review.…”