Design and Mechanical Properties of Short Carbon Fiber Reinforced Biomimetic Materials

In natural evolution, numerous biomaterials exhibit astonishing mechanical properties due to the exquisite coordination of their internal structures at all levels. Carbon fiber, as an excellent artificial material, provides an important raw material support for the design of biomimetic materials. This study uses short carbon fibers and polyurethane as raw materials, combined with a syringe extrusion and thermal evaporation methods to prepare short carbon fiber reinforced polyurethane composite film with specific fiber orientation. Then, a spiral layered structure material resembling mantis shrimp with different interlayer angles was prepared using laminated assembly method. In addition, the mechanical strengthening mechanism of the material was studied by observing its morphology characteristics before and after stretching and measuring its tensile strength. The results show that short carbon fibers have good orientation consistency in thin film materials. When the fiber orientation angle is 45°, the tensile strength of the thin film material is the highest; when the interlayer angle is 30°, the tensile strength of short carbon fiber reinforced polyurethane biomimetic spiral structure material is the highest. The results of this study are of guiding significance for the design and preparation of high-performance short fiber reinforced composite materials, and for achieving their performance biomimetic optimization.