Autonomous materials with controlled toughening and healing

作者：Garcia Michael E^*; Lin Yirong; Sodano Henry A

来源：Journal of Applied Physics, 2010, 108(9): 093512.

DOI：10.1063/1.3499351

Biological systems exhibit many advanced sensory and healing traits that can be applied to the design of modern material systems. The foremost goal for the development of future adaptive structures is to provide materials capable of autonomously adapting in order to impede damage progression and, subsequently, heal the damaged region. Here, a novel autonomous material system is devised using shape memory polymers (SMPs), which employ a fiber optic network, functioning both as a damage detection sensor and thermal stimulus delivery system. This system mimics the advanced sensory system as well as toughening and healing mechanisms found in human bones. By incorporating both methods into this material, the resulting autonomous system is able to increase toughness by 11 times over the original material. In addition to toughening, the shape memory effect can be used to close the crack and upon reloading of the toughened SMP specimen to failure, the system demonstrates a 96% strength recovery of the virgin strength. Following crack closure the new material system has 4.9 times more toughness than the un-toughened specimen even through it has been strained four times past its virgin failure strain.

• 出版日期2010-11-1