Nature-Inspired Protecto-Flexible Impact-Tolerant Materials

The search for impact-tolerant, light-weight flexible materials has challenged materials scientists and engineers for decades. In this quest, many researchers have focused on studying natural armor as a guide to propose bioinspired materials with enhanced properties. The energy dissipation and flexibility mechanisms activated at different hierarchical structural levels of natural systems are used here as a guide to improve the energy and flexibility of synthetic materials. In particular, fish scales and osteoderms are selected as proper biological models to develop a novel family of cost-effective bioinspired protecto-flexible (Pf) materials. Furthermore, a bullet-proof protecto-flexible prototype is manufactured and tested. The ballistic tests suggest that under real stringent conditions, the system is capable of absorbing high levels of energy while remaining flexible enough to allow movement to the user. Remarkably, the material system developed allows its implementation into realistic high volumes of production with low added costs. Consequently, the proposed strategy for developing bioinspired Pf materials will enable the development of the next generation of high-performance impact-resistant materials.