Multiscale mechanics of biological and biologically inspired materials and structures

Abstract

Abstract:The world of natural materials and structures provides an abundance of applications in which mechanics is a critical issue for our understanding of functional material properties. In particular, the mechanical properties of biological materials and structures play an important role in virtually all physiological processes and at all scales, from the molecular and nanoscale to the macroscale, linking research fields as diverse as genetics to structural mechanics in an approach referred to as materiomics. Example cases that illustrate the importance of mechanics in biology include mechanical support provided by materials like bone, the facilitation of locomotion capabilities by muscle and tendon, or the protection against environmental impact by materials as the skin or armors. In this article we review recent progress and case studies, relevant for a variety of applications that range from medicine to civil engineering. We demonstrate the importance of fundamental mechanistic insight at multiple time-and lengthscales to arrive at a systematic understanding of materials and structures in biology, in the context of both physiological and disease states and for the development of de novo biomaterials. Three particularly intriguing issues that will be discussed here include: First, the capacity of biological systems to turn weakness to strength through the utilization of multiple structural levels within the universality-diversity paradigm. Second, material breakdown in extreme and disease conditions. And third, we review an example where the hierarchical design paradigm found in natural protein materials has been applied in the development of a novel biomaterial based on amyloid protein.

Laminar tendon composites with enhanced mechanical properties

“…This dissimilarity is a result of differences in the failure mechanism before and after crosslinking. In the non-crosslinked samples, many of the crosslinks between the fibers and matrix have been disrupted, which allows for the sliding of the collagen fibrils past each other, as the fibrils are relatively short (5–20 mm [32,33]). This type of failure can be compared to the shear-lag model for failure of short-fibered composites developed by Cox [34], explaining failure by delamination and fiber pull-out [35–37], where stress is transferred from the matrix to the fibers by interfacial shear stress.…”

Quantifying cyber-resilience against resource-exhaustion attacks

“…While this is likely true for simple, man-made materials, biological materials are far more complex and contain intricate hierarchies of proteins, microfibrils, and other structures laid out with all the complexity of a program. These materials exhibit highly nonlinear stress-strain reactions [13], [14] that are only poorly understood at this time. However, the same stress-strain analysis can shed light on these complex behaviors.…”

How Soft Polymers Cope with Cracks and Notches

“…Soft materials are endowed with unique features and mechanical properties, explaining the great attention that they have been receiving from the scientific community in the last decades. In natural systems, soft tissues are a fertile source of inspiration for advanced applications, with mechanics and biology going hand-in-hand to formulate the underlying mechanical principles and develop new optimized structural materials [2][3][4][5][6].…”