(July 29, 2015) The boxfish’s unique armor draws its strength
from hexagon-shaped scales and the connections between them, engineers at the
University of California, San Diego, have found.
They describe their findings and the carapace of the boxfish
(Lactoria cornuta) in the July 27 issue of the journal Acta Materialia.
Engineers also describe how the structure of the boxfish could serve as
inspiration for body armor, robots and even flexible electronics.
“The boxfish is small and yet it survives in the ocean where
it is surrounded by bigger, aggressive fish, at a depth of 50 to 100 meters,”
said Wen Yang, a UC San Diego alumna now working at Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology in Zurich in Switzerland and the paper’s first author. “After I
touched it, I realized why it can survive - it is so strong but at the same
time so flexible.”
The boxfish’s hard frame and flexible body make it an ideal
animal to study for inspiration for armor materials. The hexagon-shaped scales
are called scutes. They are connected by sutures, similar to the connections in
a baby’s skull, which grow and fuse together as the baby grows.
Most fish have overlapping scales, said Steven Naleway a
materials science and engineering Ph.D. student and co-author on the paper.
“That means that there are no weak points, should a bite from a predator land
exactly in between scales,” he said. “We are currently investigating what mechanical
advantage scutes and sutures might provide. We know that the boxfish has
survived for 35 million years with this armor, so the design has proved very
successful in nature.”
Each hexagonal scale, or scute, has a raised, star-like
structure in the center that distributes stress across the entire surface.
Under the scutes, the team found an inner layer that forms a complex structure
in which collagen fibers interlock. This structure creates a flexible inner
layer in the armor, which is difficult to penetrate due to the interlocking
collagen fibers. Together, the outer and inner layers of the boxfish armor
provide the fish with protection unique in the natural world.