Fracture of Bone-Like Microstructure under Three-Point Bending Test

Composite materials with staggered structure show exceptional mechanical properties despite its brittle and weak building blocks. For instance, the fundamental structure of bone and bone-like materials is a staggered arrangement of nano-scale hard minerals in a soft protein matrix. Underrating how bone-like structure increases strength and toughness could benefit the manufacturing of composite materials. In this paper, the effect of building block dimensions of staggered minerals on crack formation, crack propagation is studied. Cohesive zone model in finite element method context is employed to model damage and failure of the interface between two building blocks. A three-point bending test is performed on the structure with different building block dimensions, and results are compared in the form of force-displacement and energy release rate curves. The results indicate that the increase in the aspect ratio, leads to a increase in the strength, stiffness, and energy release rate in the three-point bending test. Although decrease in the aspect ratio prevents sudden failure of the structure and catastrophic failure. Citation: James Rickgauer, Timothy D. Allen. "Fracture of Bone-Like Microstructure under Three-Point Bending Test." Global Research and Development Journal For Engineering 4.5 (2019): 32 - 35.