Ottman TertulianoUniversity of Pennsylvania
“Learning from Bones to Build Better Alloys”
Every time you run or jump, your bones accumulate tiny cracks at the nanoscale. Most never become fractures, because bone is built as a hierarchy of structures, from nanoscale protein fibrils to cellular networks, each of which plays a role in slowing and redirecting damage. Using synchrotron X-rays capable of imaging structures a thousand times thinner than a human hair, we watch in real time how these structures interact with cracks before the body has a chance to repair them. It turns out the same hierarchical logic that makes bone tough can be borrowed to design better metals. We will discuss what bone has taught us about how structural materials fail, and how those lessons are showing up in next-generation 3D printed alloys.