ISSN:
1662-8985
Source:
Scientific.Net: Materials Science & Technology / Trans Tech Publications Archiv 1984-2008
Topics:
Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Production Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Traffic Engineering, Precision Mechanics
Notes:
Illuminating fundamental aspects of plant cell wall mechanics will lead to novelbiological and engineering inspired strategies for application in the cotton and wood fiber industriesand in developing novel plant-derived materials that are increasingly seen as environmentallyfriendly alternatives. The stiffness properties of cell wall polymers such as cellulose microfibrilsand xyloglucans are known but the relationship between the composite structure of the wall and itseffective stiffness remains poorly understood. Understanding this relationship is important toengineers using and designing plant-derived materials and to biologists studying plant growth. Wehave developed a software system to generate microfibril-xyloglucan networks resembling thosefound in cell walls. Finite element analysis was implemented to predict the effective Young’smodulus of varying sizes of the microfibril-xyloglucan network. Results from the finite elementmodels show that the network’s effective moduli of the cell walls having microfibrils parallel toapplied loadings are relatively high (~90-215MPa) compared with those of the walls havingrandomly oriented microfibrils (~20-47MPa). The walls having microfibrils parallel to each otherbut perpendicular to applied loadings have lowest stiffness (~17-118kPa). The Young’s moduli aresignificantly lower than those of its constituent polymers and generally in agreement withexperimentally measured values
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://www.tib-hannover.de/fulltexts/2011/0528/01/40/transtech_doi~10.4028%252Fwww.scientific.net%252FAMR.32.197.pdf
