Optimization of

Nacre- like material

Vishak M
SC17B057

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Introduction
• Nacre, spider-silk, bone all have mechanical properties
unmatched by their engineering counterparts.
• Reason: Sophisticated microstructure organised over multiple
hierarchies.
• They amplify the properties of their relatively weak ingredients
• These inspire novel bio mimetic materials offering superior
performance over traditional materials
• Nacre from mollusk shell has great significance.
• It is a staggered composite made from microscopic mineral
tablets with high aspect ratio arranged in a 3 D fashion.
• At least 4 species have developed these kind of staggered
composite which is an interesting example of convergent 2
evolution.
RVE(The Representative
volume Element)
• Staggered composites are composed of units with high aspect
ratio aligned in the direction of loading.
• In Nacre like materials the inclusions are tablets which are
either arranged in a well defined manner with a narrow range
of overlap length or very random arrangement with a wide
range of overlap lengths

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RVE
• The mechanism of any of these two may be captured by a
representative volume element (RVE) whose behaviour is
assumed to represent the entire material.
• A 2D RVE is used to predict modulus ,energy absorption,
strength and strain of staggered composites.

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RVE
•  

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The Mechanics of shear stress
•  It is governed by a dimension less number

• For or smaller, the shear stress is quasi uniform along the

overlap length.
• For larger values, shear stresses become concentrated near
the ends of overlap length.
• At even higher values peel stress , stresses perpendicular to
interfaces starts to form at the ends.
• In this case the shear stress at the ends can be considered as
stress concentrations and can lead to failure much before.
• For the extreme case of the shear stress will be transferred as
point load. This case is used to predict the failure criteria in 6
this study.
The Modulus
•  The modulus of the composite is given as

• When tensile stress is applied , due to stress concentrations

the ends of overlap region will first fail and crack is propagated
inwards.
• Therefore tensile stress will be bourn as the shear stress at the
overlap region

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The Failure
• The
  composite fails wen the stresses are transferred as point
loads at ends of overlap region, which is limiting

• The total energy absorbed before failure is then

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Barthelat, F., Dastjerdi, A.K., Rabiei, R., 2013. An improved failure criterion for
biological and engineered staggered composites. J. R. Soc. Interface 10, 79
Normalised parameters
•  

• If we carefully look at all are functions of .

• Therefore the problem in designing a nacre based material
corresponds to finding the

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Multiobjective function
• Since
  the point of optimum for each of them were at different
position , it calls for the need of a multi objective function.
• ,
• Where m, n, k are our priorities.

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Comparison
•  At m=n=k=1/3, the optimum was found to be

• In the reference it is given as

• 1

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Ternary plots
•  The ternary plot between

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The ternary plot between
 

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The ternary plot between
 

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Reference
• Barthelat, Francois. "Designing nacre-like materials for
simultaneous stiffness, strength and toughness: Optimum
materials, composition, microstructure and size." Journal of
the Mechanics and Physics of Solids 73 (2014): 22-37.

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