Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 3 No. 3 Fall 2018 | Page 12

STORY BY ROSAIRE BUSHEY
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
potential for applying the lessons learned for innovative bio-inspired materials.
“We want to understand how nature designs lightweight materials with brittle components
and we are trying to understand the 3-D architecture of the sea urchin spine’s structure to see
if we can determine how the structure helps achieve high strength and damage tolerance given
the inherent weakness of the chalk it’s made from,” said Li.
Working with co-investigator Yunhui Zhu, an assistant professor with the Bradley Depart-
ment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the team will use a synchrotron tomography
technique and mathematical tools developed by the Argonne National Laboratory to obtain
high-resolution 3-D volumetric data to determine how the porous network is designed in terms
of connections, arrangements, and orientation.
“The project is based on characterizing and understanding the internal structure of the sea
urchin spine to find out why it’s so strong,” Li said. “Sea urchin spines have been shown to
perform similarly to the best ceramic cellular materials people have made in the lab in terms of
relative strength.”
MOMENTUM
FALL 2018
PAGE 12