MOMENTUM • VIRGINIA TECH MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 27 that formation often results in unexpectedly complex internal geometries .
In the Laboratory of Biological and Bio-Inspired Materials , Li and his team are investigating natural lightweight ceramic structures , with the goal of developing new material design principles for addressing the mechanical weakness of ceramic foams and architected materials .
“ Our overall goal is to learn and take inspiration from nature to develop novel porous materials ,” Li said . “ Nature offers many good material lessons for designing porous materials that are both strong and damage-tolerant .”
Previously , the team discovered that the unique chamber-based bioceramic structure of cuttlebone ( the internal skeleton of cuttlefish ) is simultaneously strong , stiff , and fracture-resistant , while still allowing for buoyancy regulation . This project and others like it motivated the team to investigate additional applications for nature ’ s porous designs at the microscale .
Starfish skeletons : A natural architected ceramic lattice
In this work , Li and his team turned their eyes to the skeleton of the knobby starfish . Widely distributed throughout the Indo-Pacific region , the species ’ dried skeletons are often used for home decoration . These starfish feature cone-shaped projections that rise from their dorsal surface and discourage predators .
While observing samples of these starfish skeletons at the Nanoscale Characterization and Fabrication Laboratory ( NCFL ), Li and Ph . D . student Ting Yang ( co-first author of the paper and now a post-doctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ), made an observation that piqued their interest : At the microscale , the starfish skeleton exhibited a lattice architecture with very regular arrangements of branches quite different from the porous structures of the cuttlebone and sea urchin spines previously studied . In fact , the unique skeletal organization of this starfish exhibits