Bioinspired fabric architecture harnessing anisotropy for omnidirectional mechanical protection

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Tian, Yuanyuan; Chi, Hanzhi; Tey, Wei Shian; Zhang, Zuoqi; Fan, Jingbo; Lim, Zheng Han; Ong, Adrian; Qi, Jerry; Zhou, Kun
• 刊物名称: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0027-8424; 1091-6490
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2608431123
• 发表日期: 2026-09-22
• 页码: e2608431123
• 关键词: bioinspired fabric architecture; powder bed fusion 3D printing; fiber-reinforced composites; omnidirectional mechanical protection; orientation

摘要

Powder bed fusion (PBF)-printed fiber-reinforced composites often exhibit powder-recoating-induced anisotropy, resulting in direction-dependent mechanical behavior that limits reliability under multidirectional loading. Inspired by the surface-following alignment of enamel rods in tooth enamel, we develop a fabric architecture that integrates build-orientation-controlled fiber alignment with a staggered interlocking topology of cubic unit cells. By optimizing build orientation and leveraging its shape-adaptive structural feature, this bioinspired architecture enables surface-following reinforcement, thereby harnessing anisotropy and achieving spatially uniform mechanical enhancement. Vacuum-confinement-induced jamming further enhances strength and energy absorption, while shifting the postyield response from bending-dominated deformation to friction-governed tilting of the interlocked unit cells, improving recovery ratio and overcoming the conventional trade-off between strength and recoverability. Consequently, this architecture demonstrates 1.85 & times; higher specific strength and 1.92 & times; higher specific energy absorption than the nonoptimized reference without vacuum confinement, ranking it among the leading lightweight load-bearing and energy-absorbing architectures. Additionally, the proposed fabric architecture delivers spatially uniform mechanical protection, a capability that remains challenging to achieve using conventional PBF-printed fiber-reinforced architectures. This work introduces a synergistic strengthening strategy that integrates structural design, process control, and external confinement. Importantly, we propose a general architecture-driven design paradigm that transforms mechanical anisotropy from a limitation into a performance advantage. The resulting fabric architecture delivers high-performance omnidirectional mechanical protection across diverse applications, such as protective casings of sensitive underwater systems and shape-adaptive protective covers.