Experimental and numerical studies of the mechanical behavior of mollusk shells

This paper presents a combination of experimental and numerical techniques to investigate the mechanical behavior of mollusk shells. For this purpose, primary models of the shells are developed based on the governing mathematical equations. The intersection points on the surface of the shell models are numerically identified and then employed to remove the extra interior parts. The non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) equations that represent the mollusk shell surface are generated using the curve fitting method. The advancing front technique is used to generate the adaptive finite element (FE) mesh over the shell. The final 3D generated meshed models accurately describe the spatial configuration of the mollusk shells as well as their interior architectures. Experimental X-rays imaging technique is utilized to show the similarity between the developed models and the real samples. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is employed to provide information on the microstructure of the shells. Experimental compression tests are conducted to provide comparisons between the mechanical behavior of models and mollusk shell samples under external loading conditions. The results of this work may be useful in the design of new engineering structures.