Fiber Gives Toughness

dozens of light green stalks of bamboo fill the frame

Biological Strategy

Bamboo

AskNature Team

Image: Sophia Ayame / Unsplash / Free non-commercial use

Prevent Fracture/Rupture

High force impact or stress can cause materials that comprise living systems to separate into two or more pieces (called fracturing) or to break or burst suddenly (called rupturing). For example, a scallop prevents structural failure from fracture because its shell is comprised of two materials of varying stiffness. When a crack moves from the scallop’s stiff material to the less stiff one, the latter reduces the force at the tip of the crack, thereby stopping it from spreading farther.

Search this Function

Flowering Plants

Clade Angiosperms (“receptacle seed”): Dandelions, oaks, grasses, cacti, apples

With 416 families containing some 300,000 known species, angiosperms are the most diverse group of plants, and they can be found around the globe in a wide variety of habitats. They are characterized by seeds that grow enclosed in ovaries, which are enclosed in flowers. The floral organs then develop into fruits of myriad kinds and dimensions, from simple seed casings on maples to elaborate fleshy growths like papayas. The oldest flower known from fossils, Montsechia vidalii, appeared during the Jurassic Period 130 million years ago. They are the primary food source for herbivorous animals, which in turn makes them the indirect food source for carnivores as well.

Search this Living System

Fibers of bamboo and trees provide toughness by their simple structure of fiber-reinforced composites

Fiber Arrangement Is Highly Efficient

Fish-pole bamboo

Fibers in stems of bamboo use materials efficiently because of their arrangement

“[I]t has been found that
these natural biomaterials [bamboos and trees] have very reasonable structures which gives
them many excellent properties, such as good carrying capacity, good
toughness, self-healing, and so on. Furthermore, these biomaterials have
very fine and special structures rather than complicated compositions…For example, trees and
bamboos are typical long, fiber-reinforced composites. Their fibers have
different sizes and arranged modes in structure so that they can
display the optimal behaviors under tensile, bending, compressing stress
and other applied load…So, the complicated and reasonable structure of natural biomaterials
can give us an important insight into making better structure materials
through biomimetic design.” (Wang et al. 2000:9)

Wang CA; Huang Y; Zan Q; Guo H; Cai S. 2000. Biomimetic structure design – a possible approach to change the brittleness of ceramics in nature. Materials Science and Engineering C 11(1):9-12.

Last Updated August 18, 2016

References

Journal article

Biomimetic structure design — a possible approach to change the brittleness of ceramics in nature

Materials Science and Engineering: C | 25/07/2002 | Chang-an Wang, Yong Huang, Qingfeng Zan, Hai Guo, Shengyou Cai

embedly preview

AskNature