Mechanical Energy Absorption of Architecturally Interlocked Petal-Schwarzites

TL;DR

This study uses atomistic simulations to evaluate the mechanical energy absorption capabilities of novel interlocked petal-schwarzite nanostructures, revealing their potential as lightweight, high-strength materials.

Contribution

It introduces six new hybrid schwarzite-based structures and demonstrates their exceptional mechanical properties through detailed molecular dynamics simulations.

Findings

Structures withstand GPa-level compressive stress

Can be compressed past 50% strain without collapse

Achieve high specific energy absorption of 45.95 MJ/kg

Abstract

We carried out fully atomistic reactive molecular dynamics simulations to study the mechanical behavior of six newly proposed hybrid schwarzite-based structures (interlocked petal-schwarzites). Schwarzites are carbon crystalline nanostructures with negative Gaussian curvature created by mapping a TPMS (Triply Periodic Minimal Surface) with carbon rings containing six to eight atoms. Our simulations have shown that petal-schwarzite structures can withstand uni-axial compressive stress up to the order of GPa and can be compressed past 50 percent strain without structural collapse. Our most resistant hierarchical structure has a calculated compressive strength of 260~GPa and specific energy absorption (SEA) of 45.95 MJ/kg, while possessing a mass density of only 685 kg/m$^3$. These results show that these structures could be excellent lightweight materials for applications that require mechanical energy absorption.