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It is a beetle that can withstand bird bites, animal footprints, and even being run over by a Toyota Camry. Now scientists are studying what the insect’s crush-resistant shell might teach them about designing stronger airplanes and buildings.
“This beetle is super tough,” said Purdue University civil engineer Pablo Zavattieri, who was among a group of researchers who hit the bug with a car as part of a new study.
So how does the seemingly indestructible insect do it? The species, aptly named diabolical armored beetle, owes its power to unusual armor that is layered and assembled like a puzzle, according to the study by Zavattieri and colleagues published in Nature on Wednesday. And its design, they say, could help inspire more durable structures and vehicles.
To understand what gives the inch-long beetle its strength, the researchers first tested how much squashed it might need. The species, which can be found in the forests of Southern California, withstood a compression of approximately 39,000 times its own weight.
For a 200 pound man, that would be like surviving a 7.8 million pound crush.
Other local beetle species shattered under a third of the pressure.
The researchers then used electron microscopes and CT scans to examine the beetle’s exoskeleton and find out what made it so strong.
Scientists say the seemingly indestructible beetle’s armor could offer clues to designing stronger aircraft and buildings. (AP)
As is often the case with flightless beetles, the species’ elytra, a protective sheath that normally wraps around the wings, had grown stronger and tougher over time. Up close, the scientists realized that this cover also benefited from special puzzle-shaped bindings and layered architecture.
When compressed, they found that the structure fractured slowly rather than breaking all at once.
“When you pull them apart,” Zavattieri said, “it doesn’t break catastrophically. It just warps a bit. That is crucial for the beetle. “
It could also be useful for engineers designing aircraft and other vehicles and buildings with a variety of materials such as steel, plastic, and plaster. Today, engineers rely on pins, bolts, welds, and adhesives to hold everything together. But those techniques can be prone to degradation.
In the structure of the beetle’s shell, nature offers an “interesting and elegant” alternative, Zavattieri said.
Because the beetle-inspired design gradually and predictably fractures, the cracks could be more reliably inspected for safety, said Po-Yu Chen, an engineer from Taiwan National Tsing Hua University who was not involved in the research.
The beetle study is part of an $ 8 million project funded by the US Air Force to explore how the biology of creatures like mantis shrimp and bighorn sheep could help develop impact resistant materials.
“We’re trying to go beyond what nature has done,” said study co-author David Kisailus, a materials scientist and engineer at the University of California, Irvine.
The research is the latest effort to borrow from the natural world to solve human problems, said Brown University evolutionary biologist Colin Donihue, who was not involved in the study. Velcro, for example, was inspired by the hook-like structure of vegetable burrs. Artificial stickers took a page out of super sticky gecko feet.
Donihue said that a myriad of other traits found in nature could provide insight: “These are adaptations that have evolved over millennia.”
