The Bio-inspired Study of Homogeneous Composite Materials

Wool is the most popular natural material. In the textile industries, the release of a lot of waste wool fibers and their products lead to the idea of regeneration of wool keratin materials. However, the most significant limitation may be the poor fracture resistance of neat keratin films. Greater failure resistance can be achieved by fiber-reinforced matrix when compared to the matrix materials alone. In this article, the fibrils of wool were used as the reinforcements in composite films, which can meet the requirement of biocompatibility. The fibrils morphology was investigated, that is, plain fibrils and fractal-tree structure fibrils. Finite element analysis and tensile tests were used to conduct a direct study on the mechanical properties of composites. It was found that the branched fibrils lead to both higher strength and fracture toughness for the composites than the plain fibrils.