Biomechanics of Hierarchically-Structured Enamel in Grinding Dentitions: An Evolutionary-Guided Route to Designing Damage Tolerant Materials.
Abstract
Fracture and wear are ubiquitous issues affecting reliability, survivability and maintenance of aircraft, satellites and supporting infrastructure critical to the Air Force’s mission. However, performance criteria (density, environment, stresses, etc.) of Air Force materials preclude the use of many traditional material systems. The enamel of grazing animals represents one of Nature’s most remarkable biological materials — a ceramic-like composite showing exceptional strength, toughness, wear-resistance, and controlled-crack propagation. The proposed work will study the hard, light-weight, fracture-resistant, wear-resistant, multi-functional, damage-tolerant tissues (biomaterial composites) developed by different animals to preserve and ensure long term reliability of a critical system (feeding), that is routinely subjected high contact stresses (millions of cycles). Our research will: 1) quantify the mechanical and wear properties of enamel tissues across nano- to whole-tooth scales; 2) use an evolutionary approach to readily identify the key structural attributes that enabled its unexpected suite of mechanical properties; and 3) determine the structure-property-performance relationship using advanced materials characterization techniques. This study will specifically focus on a variety of highly specialized teeth that have file-like enamel crests exposed to abrasive wear from silica-laden grasses and fracture-promoting sediment inclusions (e.g. horses, elephants and hadrosaurs). The team will comprehensively characterize the material properties across length scales (using micro-and nano-mechanical testing tools), measure and model their single tissue to whole-tooth wear properties and utilize discrete and continuum constitutive modeling to understand how the enamel prism fabrics enable long term functionality.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jun 11, 2018
- Source ID
- FA95501810363
Entities
People
- Siddhartha Pathak
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- United States Air Force
- University of Nevada, Reno