Creature feature: Twisting cracks impart superhero toughness to animals
Super-resilient materials found in the animal kingdom owe their strength and toughness to a design strategy that causes cracks to follow the twisting pattern of fibers, preventing catastrophic failure.
Researchers in a recent series of papers have documented this behavior in precise detail and also are creating new composite materials modeled after the phenomenon. The work was mainly performed at Purdue University with collaborators at the University of California, Riverside.