Numerical Study on Helical Fiber Fragmentation in Chiral Biological Materials

Chiral microstructures exist widely in natural biological materials such as wood, bone, and climbing tendrils. The helical shape of such microstructures plays an important role in stress transfer between fiber and matrix, and in the mechanical properties of biological materials. In this paper, helical fiber fragmentation behavior is studied numerically using the finite-element method (FEM), and then, the effects of helical shape on fiber deformation and fracture, and the corresponding mechanical mechanisms are investigated. The results demonstrate that, to a large degree, the initial microfibril angle (MFA) determines the elastic deformation and fracture behavior of fibers. For fibers with a large MFA, the interfacial area usually has large values, inducing a relatively low fragment density during fiber fragmentation. This work may be helpful in understanding the relationship between microstructure and mechanical property in biological materials, and in the design and fabrication of bio-inspired advanced functional materials.