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Enhanced fault-tolerance in biomimetic hierarchical materials -- a simulation study

Hierarchical microstructures are often invoked to explain the high resilience and fracture toughness of biological materials such as bone and nacre. Biomimetic material models inspired by those structural arrangements face the obvious challenge of capturing their inherent multi-scale complexity, both in experiments and in simulations. To study the influence of hierarchical microstructural patterns in fracture behavior, we propose a large scale three-dimensional hierarchical beam-element simulation framework, where we generalize the constitutive behavior of Timoshenko beam elasticity and Maximum Distortion Energy Theory failure criteria to the complex case of hierarchical networks of approximately 5 million elements. We perform a statistical study of stress-strain relationships and fracture surface mophologies, and conclude that hierarchical systems are capable of arresting crack propagation, an ability that reduces their sensitivity to pre-existing damage and enhances their fault tolerance compared to reference generic fibrous materials.