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In pursuit of damage tolerance in engineering and biological materials

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Abstract

The ability to image and quantify material behavior in real time at nano to near-macro length scales, preferably in three dimensions, is a crucial feature of modern materials science. Here, we examine such an approach to characterize the mechanical properties of three diverse classes of materials: (1) biological materials, principally bone, using both in situ small-/wide-angle x-ray scattering/diffraction to probe nanoscale deformation behavior and x-ray computed microtomography to study microscale damage mechanisms; (2) biomimetic materials, specifically a nacre-like ceramic, where microtomography is used to identify toughening mechanisms; (3) synthetic materials, specifically ceramic textile composites, using in situ microtomography to quantify the salient mechanical damage at ultrahigh temperatures. The mechanistic insights for the understanding of damage evolution and fracture afforded by these techniques are undeniable; as such, they can help provide a basis for the achievement of enhanced damage tolerance in structural materials.

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Notes

  1. * The R-curve provides an assessment of the fracture toughness in the presence of subcritical crack growth involving measurements of the crack-driving force (e.g., the stress intensity K or J -integral) (i.e., the rate of change in potential energy per unit increase in crack area) as a function of crack extension (Δa). The value of the driving force at Δ a → 0 provides a measure of the crack-initiation toughness, whereas the slope of the R-curve can be used to characterize the crack-growth toughness.

  2. † There are several different types of collagen in the human body that can be distinguished by their chemical compositions. Type I is considered to be the most abundant and is found in bones and skin.

  3. ‡ The mineral strain does not significantly change,7 principally because the hydroxyapatite has a stiffness roughly three orders of magnitude larger than the collagen.

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Acknowledgments

I thank my colleagues, postdocs, and students who participated in this work, especially Drs. Tony Tomsia, Bernd Gludovatz, Hrishi Bale, Max Launey, Alessandra Carriero, and Liz Zimmermann. Thanks also to Dr. Simon Tang for his cross-linking measurements, Drs. David Marshall and Brian Cox for their involvement in our CMC research, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Advanced Light Source (ALS) beamline scientists Dr. Alastair MacDowell and Eric Schaible for help with our synchrotron studies. Work on mechanical properties/biomimetic materials was funded by the Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division, under contract DE-AC02–05CH11231, which also supports the x-ray synchrotron beamlines 7.3.3 (SAXS/WAXD) and 8.3.2 (microtomography) at the ALS. Studies on bone were supported by the National Institute of Health (NIH/NIDCR) under grant 5R01 DE015633, and on CMCs by AFOSR/NASA via Teledyne under contract FA9550–09–1-0477.

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  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, USA

    Robert O. Ritchie

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Correspondence to Robert O. Ritchie.

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This article is based on a presentation given by Robert O. Ritchie for the David Turnbull Lectureship on December 3, 2013, at the Materials Research Society Fall Meeting in Boston. Ritchie received this award for his “pioneering contributions to, and teaching us all how to think about, the mechanistic role of microstructure in governing fatigue and fracture in a variety of materials systems, and communicating his scientific insights to the world audience through eloquent lectures and seminal publications.”

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Ritchie, R.O. In pursuit of damage tolerance in engineering and biological materials. MRS Bulletin 39, 880–890 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs.2014.197

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