Bioinspired approaches for toughening of fibre reinforced polymer composites

Abstract

In Nature, there are a large range of tough, strong, lightweight and multifunctional structures that can be an inspiration to better performing materials. This work presents a review of structures found in Nature, from biological ceramics and ceramics composites, biological polymers and polymers composites, biological cellular materials, biological elastomers to functional biological materials, and their main toughening mechanisms, envisaging potential mimicking approaches that can be applied in advanced continuous fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) composite structures. For this, the most common engineering composite manufacturing processes and current composite damage mitigation approaches are analysed. This aims at establishing the constraints of biomimetic approaches development as these bioinspired structures are to be manufactured by composite technologies. Combining both Nature approaches and engineering composites developments is a route for the design and manufacturing of high mechanical performance and multifunctional composite structures, therefore new bioinspired solutions are proposed.