Enhancement of buckling strength in the tapered skeletal elements of marine sponges

Abstract eng:
Biological structures, such as stems and bones, possess some very distinct mechanical designs. By comparing variants of these designs using synthetic materials, scientists have shown that bio-inspired designs can lead to an enhancement of the materials’ properties. However, a major criticism of pursuing bio-inspired engineering has been that there are scarcely any examples of structural biomaterials that have been rigorously shown to contain a close-to-optimal design. To address this criticism, we discuss the skeletal elements of the marine sponge Tethya aurantia called spicules, which are monolithic silica rods that are 1–2 mm long, 30–50 µm thick. The spicules’ mechanical effectiveness is primarily limited by their buckling strength. Spicules possess a distinct taper along their length. Using recent mathematical results, mechanical testing and computational modeling we show that the spicules’ tapered shape is very close to the shape that has the greatest buckling strength.

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