Fracture toughness of leaves: Overview and observations

TL;DR

This paper reviews the fracture mechanisms of leaves, highlighting their potential applications in developing durable materials, understanding biological tissues, and improving crop protection for food security.

Contribution

It provides an overview of leaf fracture toughness, observations on their natural composite structure, and discusses implications for material science and agriculture.

Findings

Leaves are natural composites with optimized fracture properties.

Understanding leaf fracture can inform development of tough bio-inspired materials.

Insights into leaf structure may help improve crop resilience and food security.

Abstract

One might ask why is it important to know the mechanism of fracture in leaves when Mother Nature is doing her job perfectly. I could list the following reasons to address that question: (a) Leaves are natural composite structures, during millions of years of evolution, they have adapted themselves to their surrounding environment and their design is optimized, one can apply the knowledge gained from studying the fracture mechanism of leaves to the development of new composite materials; (b) Other soft tissues like skin and blood vessel have similar structure at some scales and may possess the same fracture mechanism. The gained knowledge can also be applied to these materials; (c) Global need for food is skyrocketing. There are few countries, including the United States, that have all the potentials (i.e. water, soil, sunlight, and manpower) to play a major role in the future world food supplying market. If we can increase the output of our farms and forests, by means of protecting them against herbivores [Beck 1965], pathogens [Campbell et al. 1980], and other physical damages, our share of the future market will be higher. It will also enforce our national food security because we will not be dependent on food import. We do not yet know how much of our farms and forests output can be saved if we can genetically design tougher materials, but the whole idea does worth to be studied.