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Deconvolution of the elastic properties of bivalve shell nanocomposites from direct measurement and finite element analysis

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Abstract

A new protocol has been devised for determining elastic properties of natural biocomposites in the form of bivalve shells under wet and dry conditions. Four-point bending on shell slices of Mytilus edulis, Ensis siliqua, and Pecten maximus give generally lower and more reliable values of Young’s modulus, E, than those in the literature from three-point bending, due to the more even distribution of strain. Finite element analysis of the prismatic microstructure of Pinna nobilis, obtained by X-ray tomography, shows that values of E ≈ 20 GPa can be understood in terms of the real microstructure containing a small proportion of organic matrix phase with E ≈ 1 GPa and a dominant proportion of calcite with E ≈ 90 GPa. Higher values of E obtained by nanoindentation give results which are biased toward the properties of the carbonate phase rather than of the biocomposite as a whole.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Andrew Rayment for help with nanoindentation and four-point bending, Gray Williams, Director of the Swire Institute of Marine Sciences (SWIMS) and his student Camilla Camponati for collecting and sending the Saccostrea cucullata specimens from Hong Kong, and Iris Hendriks, from the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (IMEDEA), for collecting and sending Pinna nobilis specimens from Mallorca. These were collected from spat collectors under a permit granted by the Government of the Balearic Islands.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 3EQ, UK

    Matthias O’Toole-Howes, Ruth Ingleby, Melanie Mertesdorf, Michael A. Carpenter & Elizabeth M. Harper

  2. Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB3 0FS, UK

    James Dean & Wei Li

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  1. Matthias O’Toole-Howes
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Correspondence to Michael A. Carpenter.

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O’Toole-Howes, M., Ingleby, R., Mertesdorf, M. et al. Deconvolution of the elastic properties of bivalve shell nanocomposites from direct measurement and finite element analysis. Journal of Materials Research 34, 2869–2880 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2019.159

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2019.159

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