Do you think cockroaches are the most resilient insect? Imagine a beetle that you could run over with your car and it still would not die! That beetle is diabolical ironclad beetle.
Today we’re talking about a beetle that someone literally ran over with a car. That’s right, you’re hearing me. Someone ran over this beetle with a Toyota Camry and it survived.
A group of engineers at the University of California at Irvine and Purdue University are studying the Diabolical Ironclad Beetle. They want to develop stronger and lighter materials, and they are working to understand how the beetle withstands such a great crushing force. Then they plan to take these learnings to build stronger lightweight materials.
Studying the Diabolical Ironclad Beetle
The Diabolical Ironclad Beetle has an unusual outer shell. The beetle’s outer shell resembles a jigsaw puzzle. The scientists hypothesized the unique structure of the beetle’s exoskeleton is what makes it more durable and resistant to crushing.
To give context to how amazing the beetle is. This beetle surviving being run over by a Toyota Camry would be like a 200-pound man surviving more weight than the Saturn V rocket being rolled over him. And this is not just a thing that all beetles can do. To compare it to some of its other beetle cousins, more common beetles would be squished under 1/3 of as much pressure.
The scientists used a technique named computed tomography to examine the beetle’s exoskeleton. In the material characterization technique computed tomography, or CT, x-rays are shot at an object at different angles. A detector complies the signals during the scan. Then the detector sends the results to a processor and the processor creates an image.
They used this technique on the beetle’s exoskeleton and figured out what made it so strong. They learned the beetle’s exoskeleton has jigsaw-like bindings and multiple layers.
Materials Science Principles At Work
When a force is applied to any material cracks begin to form. In the case of the beetle, the car is applying a compressive force. However, what makes the beetle unique is its response to the compressive force. In many materials, the crack will get larger and move through the center of the material until it breaks. In materials science, this is referred to as crack propagation leading to fracture.
The diabolical ironclad beetle is unique because of the way it responds to the compressive force. In the beetle’s exoskeleton, the crack does not propagate and cause the beetle to crush or snap. The zigsaw-like bindings of the exoskeleton disrupt the crack’s movement. Every time a crack contacts one of the bindings it is stopped or greatly slowed.
This effect is a commonly studied phenomenon in materials science called impedance to crack propagation. Materials scientists try to design this property into many things.
Using Learnings from the Diabolical Ironclad Beetle
Despite efforts to prevent crack propagation, materials still fail. And most materials ultimately fail at a much lower strength to weight ratios than the diabolical ironclad beetle. Strength to weight is a commonly researched materials science property that evaluates how strong a material is compared to how much it weighs.
Often materials can be made to withstand greater loads by making them heavier however this is often not practical. As a result, understanding the mechanisms of the diabolical ironclad beetles means engineers can design better and safer parts. By learning from the beetles the scientists hope to prevent cracks from moving through materials and causing failure without needing to increase the weight. This will allow them to design lightweight parts in many applications to improve things like fuel economy in cars and promote the faster building of structures.
In addition to allowing engineers to design lighter and stronger materials, the group of engineers feels that this discovery of the jigsaws can change the way materials are joined. Traditionally, joints are created in materials through welding, bolting, or riveting. However, those joints degrade and can cause a catastrophic failure if they are not regularly and closely monitored.
The scientists want to model the jigsaw-like bindings of the diabolical ironclad beetle in everyday applications. The ability to do this would allow them to not only create something that was stronger but also has a predictable failure pattern. A material is safer if it cracks and fractures in a predictable and controlled way because it is easier to determine when it will fail. This means it would be easier to identify when it’s time for preventative maintenance or to repair joints.