Multiscale characterization and micromechanical modeling of crop stem materials
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Multiscale characterization and micromechanical modeling of crop stem materials Tarun Gangwar1 · D. Jo Heuschele2 · George Annor3 · Alex Fok4 · Kevin P. Smith2 · Dominik Schillinger1 Received: 21 March 2020 / Accepted: 11 July 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract An essential prerequisite for the efficient biomechanical tailoring of crops is to accurately relate mechanical behavior to compositional and morphological properties across different length scales. In this article, we develop a multiscale approach to predict macroscale stiffness and strength properties of crop stem materials from their hierarchical microstructure. We first discuss the experimental multiscale characterization based on microimaging (micro-CT, light microscopy, transmission electron microscopy) and chemical analysis, with a particular focus on oat stems. We then derive in detail a general micromechanics-based model of macroscale stiffness and strength. We specify our model for oats and validate it against a series of bending experiments that we conducted with oat stem samples. In the context of biomechanical tailoring, we demonstrate that our model can predict the effects of genetic modifications of microscale composition and morphology on macroscale mechanical properties of thale cress that is available in the literature. Keywords Continuum micromechanics · Microimaging · Hierarchical multiscale materials · Biomechanical tailoring · Oats
1 Introduction Recent advances in genomics have paved the way for biomechanical tailoring of crops (Brulé et al. 2016). The tailoring of crop properties could open up a plethora of agricultural and forestry applications. Examples are the optimized degradation of crop residues to biofuels (Vermerris and Abril 2015; McCann et al. 2014), breeding high yield and lodging resistant crop species (Berry et al. 2004), and the design of engineered plants with functional properties for sustainable construction (Schleicher et al. 2015; Holstov et al. 2015). Genetic alterations, however, can change the mechanical behavior of crops, with dire consequences on its growth * Tarun Gangwar [email protected] 1
Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo‑ Engineering, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA
2
Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA
3
Department of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA
4
Minnesota Dental Research Center for Biomaterials and Biomechanics, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA
progress and survival (Horvath et al. 2010; Koehler and Telewski 2006). Therefore, there is a growing interest in models that can accurately and consistently predict the mechanical behavior of the genetically altered crop plant structure. Plant materials organize themselves hierarchically across multiple length scales that range from base constituents such as lignin, cellulose, hemicellulose, and pectin to cell wall, functional tissue, organ, and whole plant levels (Weg
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