Study on biomimetic staggered composite for better thermal shock resistance

Inspired by the fact that biological composites have the excellent resistance to mechanical shock, we systematically studied the thermal shock resistance of biomimetic staggered composite via analytical, computational and experimental approaches. The effective stiffness, coefficient of thermal expansion and maximum thermal stress predicted by our theoretical model agree well with finite element simulations. By sacrificing part of stiffness, an optimized microstructure can be obtained, in which the maximum thermal stress of the composites can be much lower than that of homogenous hard material. Finally, the thermal shock experiment on the material system of glass–epoxy were done, and the result supports our conclusions. This study provides an alternating way for material design to achieve high thermal shock resistance.