Hierarchical Twin Structures in the Nacre of Red Abalone Shell

Author(s):  
Jun Liu ◽  
Mehmet Sarikaya ◽  
Ilhan A. Aksay

The nacre structure of red abalone (Haliotis rufescens) shell has a higher strength and fracture toughness at room temperature compared to some monolithic ceramics. The unusual mechanical properties may be attributed to the unique microarchitecture that can be described as a laminated composite of about 95% CaCO3 and 5% organic matter (a combination of proteins, chiten, and other macromolecules). It is desirable to form synthetic materials having a microarchitecture similar to the nacre through a biomimetic approach to obtain improved mechanical properties. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to have a better understanding of the microstructure of the nacre at different length scales. The purpose of this work was to examine the structure of nacre in more detail. It has been found that the structure is actually composed of twins which are hierarchical from the nanometer to sub-millimeter scale.

2012 ◽  
Vol 1516 ◽  
pp. 255-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Zhang ◽  
L. Hu ◽  
W. Hu ◽  
G. Gottstein ◽  
S. Bogner ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTMo fiber reinforced NiAl in-situ composites with a nominal composition Ni-43.8Al-9.5Mo (at.%) were produced by specially controlled directional solidification (DS) using a laboratory-scale Bridgman furnace equipped with a liquid metal cooling (LMC) device. In these composites, single crystalline Mo fibers were precipitated out through eutectic reaction and aligned parallel to the growth direction of the ingot. Mechanical properties, i.e. the creep resistance at high temperatures (HT, between 900 °C and 1200 °C) and the fracture toughness at room temperature (RT) of in-situ NiAl-Mo composites, were characterized by tensile creep (along the growth direction) and flexure (four-point bending, vertical to the growth direction) tests, respectively. In the current study, a steady creep rate of 10-6s-1 at 1100 °C under an initial applied tensile stress of 150MPa was measured. The flexure tests sustained a fracture toughness of 14.5 MPa·m1/2at room temperature. Compared to binary NiAl and other NiAl alloys, these properties showed a remarkably improvement in creep resistance at HT and fracture toughness at RT that makes this composite a potential candidate material for structural application at the temperatures above 1000 °C. The mechanisms responsible for the improvement of the mechanical properties in NiAl-Mo in-situ composites were discussed based on the investigation results.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2103 (1) ◽  
pp. 012075
Author(s):  
AA Dmitrievskiy ◽  
DG Zhigacheva ◽  
VM Vasyukov ◽  
PN Ovchinnikov

Abstract In this work, the phase composition (relative fractions of monoclinic m-ZrO2, tetragonal t-ZrO2, and cubic c-ZrO2 phases) and mechanical properties (hardness, fracture toughness, compressive strength) of alumina toughened zirconia (ATZ) ceramics, with an addition of silica were investigated. Calcium oxide was used as a stabilizer for the zirconia tetragonal phase. It was shown that CaO-ATZ+SiO2 ceramics demonstrate increased resistance to low-temperature degradation. The plasticity signs at room temperature were found due to the SiO2 addition to CaO-ATZ ceramics. A yield plateau appears in the uniaxial compression diagram at 5 mol. % SiO2 concentration. It is hypothesized that discovered plasticity is due to the increased t→m transformability.


2008 ◽  
Vol 368-372 ◽  
pp. 1730-1732 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ping Hu ◽  
Xing Hong Zhang ◽  
Jie Cai Han ◽  
Song He Meng ◽  
Bao Lin Wang

SiC whisker-reinforced ZrB2 matrix ultra-high temperature ceramic were prepared at 2000°C for 1 h under 30MPa by hot pressing and the effects of whisker on flexural strength and fracture toughness of the composites was examined. The flexural strength and fracture toughness are 510±25MPa and 4.05±0.20MPa⋅m1/2 at room temperature, respectively. Comparing with the SiC particles-reinforced ZrB2 ceramic, no significant increase in both strength and toughness was observed. The microstructure of the composite showed that the SiC whisker was destroyed because the SiC whisker degraded due to rapid atom diffusivity at high temperature. The results suggested that some related parameters such as the lower hot-pressing temperature, a short sintering time should be controlled in order to obtain SiC whiskerreinforced ZrB2 composite with high properties.


1988 ◽  
Vol 133 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. S. Khadkikar ◽  
J. D. Rigney ◽  
J. J. Lewandowski ◽  
K. Vedula

ABSTRACTThe notched mechanical properties of Ni3AI and Ni3Al+B prepared by powder metallurgy techniques have been determined in both tension and bending at room temperature. Ten- sile tests performed using double notched specimens containing relatively blunt notches produced intergranular fracture in both Ni3Al and Ni3AI+B, with evidence of fracture initiating in an intergranular manner ahead of the blunt notch in both cases. Estimates of notched fracture toughness from bend tests and of local grain boundary fracture stress from the notched tensile tests suggest an increase in these values with boron addition.


1997 ◽  
Vol 3 (S2) ◽  
pp. 753-754
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Freeh ◽  
Mehmet Sarikaya

The research in biological hard tissues offers lessons for biomimetic (structure and processing) strategies, such as for the synthesis of hierarchical architectures tailored for specific engineering applications. These biocomposites, i.e., biogenic materials in which the major phase is an inorganic component associated with macromolecules (proteins and polysaccharides), include bones, dentin, sea-urchin skeletal units, bacterial and algal particles and molluscan shells. Here, a summary is given from a recent TEM study of the interfacial region of nacreous and prismatic sections of red abalone shell to understand the morphological and crystallographic correlations across this transition region.Many mollusk species have shells made of CaCO3 in various architectures that have evolved under different ecological conditions to produce structures that best protect the organism. The shells of many species contain both aragonite (orthorhombic, Pmnc) and calcite (Rhombohedral, R3m). In red abalone (Haliotis rufescens), the outer section, prismatic (P), is composed of columnar crystallites of calcite (1-5 μm base, 5-10 μm height), and the inner section, nacre (N), is composed of pseudo-hexagonal platelets of aragonite (side 2-5 μm), stacked as 0.25 μm layers, separated by a few nm-thick organic layer (Fig. 1).


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