Meeting Abstract

27.7  Saturday, Jan. 4 15:00  Mechanical design rules of articulated fish scale armor VARSHNEY, S. *; ZOLOTOVSKY, E.; REICHERT, S.; LI, Y.N.; OXMAN, N.; BOYCE, M.C.; ORTIZ, C.; Massachusetts Institute of Technology svarsh19@mit.edu

The mechanical design rules of the ganoid squamation in the armored fish, Polypterus senegalus, were investigated with macroscale biomimetic models. The translational design process involved four steps: (1) X-ray micro-computed tomography of excised fish scales, (2) quantitative morphometric analysis of the reconstructed scale geometries, (3) 3D geometric abstraction and associative modeling, and (4) multi-material 3D printing to fabricate an articulated, synthetic scale assembly on a flexible substrate. Experimental testing of synthetic models quantified the mechanical behavior across multiple length scales. The introduction of morphometric variation into the prototype illustrated that a combination of scale geometry and materiality control the anisotropic mechanical flexibility of the global surface, which is composed of four degrees of freedom in scale-to-scale relative motion. Synthetic models that replicate the complex biomechanics of actinopterygian fish armor give insight into design rules for developing flexible, human-fit protection that maintains both full-body coverage and user mobility.