The "Egg of Columbus" for Making the World’s Toughest Fibres

Pugno, Nicola M. (2014) The "Egg of Columbus" for Making the World’s Toughest Fibres. In «PLOS ONE», vol. 9, n. 4 San Francisco, CA (USA) : Public Library of Science, e93079-6 pp..

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    Official URL: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.137...

    Abstract

    In this letter we present the "Egg of Columbus" for making fibres with unprecedented toughness: a slider, in the simplest form just a knot, is introduced as frictional element to dissipate additional energy and thus demonstrating the existence of a previously "hidden" toughness. The proof of concept is experimentally realized making the world’s toughest fibre, increasing the toughness modulus of a commercial Endumax macroscopic fibre from 44 J/g up to 1070 J/g (and of a zylon microfiber from 20 J/g up to 1400 J/g). The ideal upperbound toughness is expected for graphene, with a theoretical value of 10^5 J/g. This new concept, able of maximizing (one fold increment) the structural robustness, could explain the mysterious abundance of knot formations, in spite of their incremental energy cost and topological difficulty, in biological evolved structures, such as DNA strands and proteins.

    Item Type: Article in journal
    FP7 Grant Agreement Number: European Research Council/ERC Starting Grant/EU/FP7/279985, European Research Council/ERC Proof of Concept/EU/FP7/619448, European Research Council/ERC Proof of Concept/EU/FP7/632277
    Department or Research center: Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering
    Subjects: T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General) > TA174 Engineering Design
    T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General) > TA350 Applied Mechanics
    T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General) > TA630 Structural Engineering
    Repository staff approval on: 22 May 2014 16:48

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