Natural stiffening increases flaw tolerance of biological fibers

Many fibers in biomaterials such as tendon, elastin, or silk feature a nonlinear stiffening behavior of the stress-strain relationship, where the rigidity of the material increases severely as the material is being stretched. Here we show that such nonlinear stiffening is beneficial for a fiber'...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Giesa, Tristan, Pugno, Nicola M., Buehler, Markus J
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Computational Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Physical Society 2013
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/76181
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4173-9659
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6601-9199