Distinct failure modes in bio-inspired 3D-printed staggered composites under non-aligned loadings

The superior mechanical properties of biological materials originate in their complex hierarchical microstructures, combining stiff and soft constituents at different length scales. In this work, we employ a three-dimensional multi-materials printing to fabricate the bio-inspired staggered composites, and study their mechanical properties and failure mechanisms. We observe that bio-inspired staggered composites with inclined stiff tablets are able to undergo two different failure modes, depending on the inclination angle. We find that such artificial structure demonstrates high toughness only under loading applied at relatively small angle to the tablets stacking direction, while for higher angles the composites fail catastrophically. This aspect of the failure behavior was captured experimentally as well as by means of the finite element analysis. We show that even a relatively simple failure model with a strain energy limiter, can be utilized to qualitatively distinguish these two different modes of failure, occurring in the artificial bio-inspired composites.