Tough, Strong, and Ductile Interlocking Hard-Soft Suture Assemblies of Cementitious Composite

Tough, Strong, and Ductile Interlocking Hard-Soft Suture Assemblies of Cementitious Composite | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Physical Sciences - Article Tough, Strong, and Ductile Interlocking Hard-Soft Suture Assemblies of Cementitious Composite Reza Moini, Dana Daneshvar, Aimane Najmeddine, Shashank Gupta This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-9388937/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Under Review Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Geometrically patterned natural interfaces, such as sutures, play a central role in load transfer, enhancing strength, energy, dissipation, while preventing catastrophic failure including woodpecker’s beak, human skull, and turtle shells. These enhanced properties are governed by mechanisms including interlocking, stretching, and pull-out. Inspired by biological toughening strategies, we introduce a soft-hard suture composite assembly for engineering the interlocking and pull-out mechanisms that govern toughness, strength, and ductility. Soft material width (w), along with suture lock angle (θ) is used to understand and design interfaces with high energy dissipation (toughness) and load transfer (strength) capacity. Experiments demonstrate that incorporating soft hyperelastic material between interlocking hard cement paste tablets increasingly produce two distinctive toughening mechanisms (interfacial debonding and ductile pull-out) corresponding to a unique dual-peak response. The hard-soft composite suture assemblies achieve up to 48.3-fold enhancement in toughness and 2.5-fold increase in tensile strength, compared to monolithic (hard-hard) suture counterparts, while preventing brittle failure in hard-phase. Additionally, by engineering the soft materials width (w) together with the lock angle (θ), a delayed brittle failure transforms into a ductile pull-out (i.e., no failure). Numerical simulations validate the role of interfacial cohesive properties and softening law in enabling interfacial debonding as a key toughening mechanism. Physical sciences/Materials science/Structural materials/Composites Physical sciences/Engineering/Civil engineering Architected materials Cementitious composites Bio-inspired interface Suture fracture toughness Full Text Additional Declarations There is NO Competing Interest. Supplementary Files SupplementaryInformation.docx Tough, Strong, and Ductile Interlocking Hard-Soft Suture Assemblies of Cementitious Composite Cite Share Download PDF Status: Under Review Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-9388937","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Physical Sciences - Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":624868798,"identity":"00460af2-05d8-4fbf-8240-0a7eb26fd03c","order_by":0,"name":"Reza 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These enhanced properties are governed by mechanisms including interlocking, stretching, and pull-out. Inspired by biological toughening strategies, we introduce a soft-hard suture composite assembly for engineering the interlocking and pull-out mechanisms that govern toughness, strength, and ductility. Soft material width (w), along with suture lock angle (θ) is used to understand and design interfaces with high energy dissipation (toughness) and load transfer (strength) capacity. Experiments demonstrate that incorporating soft hyperelastic material between interlocking hard cement paste tablets increasingly produce two distinctive toughening mechanisms (interfacial debonding and ductile pull-out) corresponding to a unique dual-peak response. The hard-soft composite suture assemblies achieve up to 48.3-fold enhancement in toughness and 2.5-fold increase in tensile strength, compared to monolithic (hard-hard) suture counterparts, while preventing brittle failure in hard-phase. 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