Amazing abalone armour
by Jonathan Sarfati
Photo by Fred Bertram
Abalones are shellfish famous both for their edible flesh and the brilliant colours
of its inner shell. The Maori people of New Zealand call it paua (pronounced PAH
wa), and make beautiful jewellery from the shells. But materials scientists are
interested in its great strength, and hope to learn how to make body armour using
its techniques. Technology copying the designs of life is called biomimetics.
Other shells, such as the conch, also use intricately structured composite materials
to produce great strength.1
They are mainly made out of calcium carbonate (CaCO3), with a tiny amount
of protein, but it’s the way this is arranged that makes the shells so much
tougher than pure calcium carbonate could ever be. The abalone has a different but
equally ingenious structure of protein and calcium carbonate.
Abalone growth
The abalone shell is made of two types of calcium carbonate: calcite for the rough
outside, and aragonite for the smooth inside,2
which is also called nacre or mother-of-pearl. Engineering researchers at the University
of California, San Diego, have now found out how the abalone’s inside shell
grows, and why it is so strong.3
They inserted very thin glass slides into the growing shell, which the abalone accepted
as part of the shell, and grew new shell on top. Then they removed it at different
time intervals to analyse the material under an electron microscope.
The animal grows its shell by first depositing a protein layer. Then calcite grows
on top of that. Then a number of proteins turn this into aragonite, which would
not normally form because it is less stable.4
These tiny crystals are all aligned in the same direction.5 Then a specially structured protein stops growth outwards,
otherwise they would form needles.
So then the crystals grow sideways into tiles, stopped only by the neighbouring
tiles. Regardless of the size of the abalone, the tiles are all about 0.5 microns
thick (about one-thousandth the thickness of a strand of human hair) and 10 microns
in diameter (1 micron is 1/25,000 inch). Then an even thinner
protein layer forms to separate one tile layer from the next. A new layer starts
before the previous layer is filled in, which makes the growing shell look like
a forest of Christmas trees.3
Structure and strength
UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering
The tiles end up as irregular stacks, and they affect light to give the typical
mother-of-pearl appearance. However, the tile layers are regular, and separated
by a protein layer about 10–20 microns thick. This protein bonds the layers
together strongly, but also allows the tiles within the layer to slip apart a little.
This slippage absorbs the energy of a heavy impact.
The protein layers also have another important part to play. They strongly hinder
cracks from going through the shell.
Design or chance?
Mehmet Sarikaya, a materials scientist and nacre expert at the University of Washington,
said, ‘Nature has designed an interface of organic and inorganic materials
interpenetrating in ways that we cannot yet equal.’6
… even the simplest bio-induced structures are currently impossible to synthesize.
In the first paragraph of their scientific paper,3 the nacre researchers
pay the compulsory homage to the wonders of evolution by natural selection over
millions of years. But they provided no specifics of how such a fine coordination
of chemical processes could arise by a series of accidents. And note that each step
in the alleged evolutionary pathway must be an improvement on the previous stage
for natural selection to act. So evolution provided no insights whatever.
Instead, the researchers analyzed the making of the shell as if it were
a design engineered for toughness. Indeed, they said, ‘ … even the
simplest bio-induced structures are currently impossible to synthesize.’3
Thus it makes good practical scientific sense to believe it really was
designed by a Synthesizer whose ability far outshines our own (Isa. 55:8–9).
Human engineers copy God’s design
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Humans have made laminates (layered materials) for a while now, but these lack the
slippage between layers that the abalone shell has. So when a layer breaks, the
whole structure is weakened.1
However, Kenneth Vecchio, mechanical and aerospace engineer at the University of
California, San Diego, has modelled his design of tough armour explicitly on the
abalone. When he was a boy in the 1970s, Dr Vecchio could not believe how hard it
was to break seashells. ‘They looked fragile, but I’d have to hit some
of them with a hammer to get a piece off.’2
Vecchio compressed alternating layers of aluminum and titanium alloy foils, then
heated them to 700°C (1300°F). These metals reacted to form a hard ‘intermetallic’
ceramic-like layer of titanium aluminide (TiAl3), while there was a residual
pliable layer of titanium alloy. Thus the result was a ‘metallic intermetallic
laminate’ (MIL), alternating between a thicker layer of hard, brittle material
and a thinner layer of more flexible material, like the abalone shell.
To test the strength of his new material, Dr Vecchio fired a heavy and hard tungsten
alloy rod into a 2 cm (¾ inch) thick sheet of his new material at a speed of 900
metres per second (2,000 mph). But it penetrated only halfway through. That means
it can stop bullets. This armour is also lightweight, so would be good for aerospace
applications.
Dr Vecchio’s work was the cover story of the March 2005 issue of the Journal
of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society.3
Update: see Scientists Create Tough Ceramic That Mimics Mother of Pearl, PhysOrg.com, 5 December 2008.
References and notes
- Graham, R., Uncovering secrets of abalone body armor, PhysOrg.com, The latest
physics and technology news, <www.physorg.com/news2694.html>, 14 January
2005.
- Petit, C., Material tough as steel? Abalone fits the bill, New York Times,
22 March 2005.
- Vecchio, K.S., Synthetic multifunctional metallic-intermetallic laminate composites,
JOM 37(3):25–31, 2005.
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Further reading
References and notes
- Daw, R., Give a shell a break, Nature 427(6976):691,
19 February 2004; Sarfati, J., Super shells, Creation 27(3):19,
2005. Return to text.
- Calcite’s crystal structure is rhombohedral/trigonal
while aragonite’s is orthorhombic. Return to text.
- Lin, A. and Meyers, M.A., Growth and structure in abalone
shell, Materials Science and Engineering A 390:27–41,
15 January 2005. Return to text.
- Thompson, J.J. et al., Direct observation of the
transition from calcite to aragonite growth as induced by abalone shell proteins,
Biophysical Journal 79(6):3307–3312, December 2000.
Return to text.
- The c-axes of the crystals are perpendicular to the protein
layer. Return to text.
- Graham, R., Uncovering secrets of abalone body armor,
PhysOrg.com, The latest physics and technology news, <www.physorg.com/news2694.html>,
14 January 2005. Return to text.
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