Fracture mechanics of protein materials

By Markus J. Buehler, T. Ackbarow. 2007

145 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Proteins are the fundamental building blocks of a vast array of biological materials involved in critical functions of life, many of which are based on highly characteristic nanostructured arrangements of protein components that include collagen, alpha helices, or beta sheets. Bone, providing structure to our body, or spider silk, used for prey procurement, are examples of materials that have incredible elasticity, strength, and robustness unmatched by many synthetic materials. This is mainly attributed to their structural formation with molecular precision. We review recent advances in using large-scale atomistic and molecular modeling to elucidate the deformation and fracture mechanics of vimentin intermediate filaments (IFs), which are hierarchical self-assembled protein networks that provide structure and stability to eukaryotic cells. We compare the fracture and failure mechanisms of biological protein materials (BPMs) with those observed in brittle and ductile crystalline materials such as metals or ceramics. Our studies illustrate how atomistic-based multiscale modeling can be employed to provide a first principles based material description of deformation and fracture, linking nano- to macroscales.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7930ecfab1e6c4e19d0e36a3fbef8da4af1938a0

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Citations in the corpus

Theoretical and computational hierarchical nanomechanics of protein materials: Deformation and fracture (2008, background): “Single molecule pulling experiments, carried out on a single protein molecule [18] (schematic based on Ref.”
Merger of structure and material in nacre and bone - Perspectives on de novo biomimetic materials (2009, background): “Research in the area of material properties of biological materials will extend our ability to carry out structural engineering, as used for buildings or bridges today, to the ultimate scale – nanoscale, and may be a vital component of the realization of nanotechnology through the merger of material”
Structural solution using molecular dynamics: Fundamentals and a case study of epoxy-silica interface (2011, background): “The atomistic approach has been shown to be powerful in obtaining solutions for small scale structural mechanics problems such as, localized fracture processes in materials (see, for example (Buehler and Ackbarow, 2007) and references therein).”