Bio-inspired tapered fibers for composites with superior toughness

The toughness of fiber-reinforced composites largely relies on crack bridging. More specifically, intact fibers left behind the tip of a propagating crack are progressively pulled out of the matrix, dissipating energy which translates into toughness. While short fibers are traditionally straight, recent work has showed that they can be shaped to increase the pullout strength, but not necessarily the energy to pullout. In this work we have modeled, fabricated and tested short fibers with tapered ends inspired from a high-performance natural material: nacre from mollusc shells. The main idea was to duplicate a key mechanism where a slight waviness of the inclusion can generate strain hardening and energy dissipation when the inclusion is pulled out. We have incorporated a similar feature to short fibers, in the form of tapered ends with well defined opening angles. We performed pullout tests on tapered steel fibers in epoxy matrices, which showed that the pullout of tapered fiber dissipates up to 27 times more energy than straight fibers. The experimental results also indicated the existence of an optimum taper angle to maximize work of pullout while preventing the brittle fracture of the matrix. An analytical model was developed to capture the pullout mechanism and the interaction between fiber and matrix. The analytical model can guide the design of tapered fibers by providing predictions on the influence of different parameters.