Mechanical and Energy-absorption Properties of Schwarzites

TL;DR

This study uses molecular dynamics simulations to explore the mechanical and energy absorption properties of carbon-based schwarzites, revealing their high elastic recovery, auxetic behavior, and potential as energy-absorbing materials.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of the mechanical behavior and energy absorption capabilities of schwarzites, including their fracture dynamics and auxetic properties.

Findings

All schwarzites can be compressed over 50% without fracture.

One schwarzite (G8bal) exhibits negative Poisson's ratio (auxetic behavior).

Schwarzites show high energy absorption potential with extensive structural reconstructions.

Abstract

We investigated through fully atomistic molecular dynamics simulations, the mechanical behavior (compressive and tensile) and energy absorption properties of two families (primitive (P688 and P8bal) and gyroid (G688 and G8bal)) of carbon-based schwarzites. Our results show that all schwarzites can be compressed (with almost total elastic recovery) without fracture to more than 50%, one of them can be even remarkably compressed up to 80%. One of the structures (G8bal) presents negative Poisson's ratio value (auxetic behavior). The crush force efficiency, the stroke efficiency and the specific energy absorption (SEA) values show that schwarzites can be effective energy absorber materials. Although the same level of deformation without fracture observed in the compressive case is not observed for the tensile case, it is still very high (30-40%). The fracture dynamics show extensive structural reconstructions with the formation of linear atomic chains (LACs).