Coconut Shell Inspires Scientists To Envision An Earth-quake Resistant Material

The evolution of species has taken different shapes in different forms. Habits, environmental elements, adaptive methods had taken long time to converge and get a compatible guise inside the genes. And humans among all have found different ways to incorporate the advantages of each such species in day-to-day lives and survived due to an amalgamation of the best qualities picked with intelligence.

Through human civilization, people have won their place on earth. However, they could not directly stop natural disasters, epidemics and other odds that has affected the lives. Once again, with the ardent solution approaching from the German Research Foundation, humans have now envisioned an indirect way to sustain against earth-quakes. And to achieve the plan, the research team has taken help from the Coconut’s hard shell.


Owing to its shell, coconuts have an outstanding track record of fitfully devising seeds germination. As reported researchers are now developing a way to embed coconut’s shell in developing a design which could withstand earth-quakes and other natural calamities. The natural height of a coconut tree is 30 meter which supports the fact that when ripe fruits fall down it needs to withstand the thrust and protect the fruit from splitting open.

Scientists explained that a coconut consists of 4 important layers such as the outer brown, leathery exocarp, a fibrous mesocarp and a tough inner endocarp which ultimately protects the seeds, resting inside the pulp. As part of an interdisciplinary project named "Biological Design and Integrative Structures”, the Plant Biomechanics Group of the University of Freiburg has collaborated with civil engineers and material scientist to engineer a structure that can withstand the impact of the earthquakes.

As for applications, the team experimented with compression machines and an impact pendulum to measure and analyze how the energy is distributed in the coconut layers. By scrutinizing the reports, biomechanist Stefanie Schmier implied that plant anatomy in combination with structural chemistry proved their research a success. Inside the endocarp layer consisting of dense lignified stone cells, the vascular ladder-like system holds up against the bending force.

Stefanie further explained that the special structure of the endocarp helps to deflect the fractures. The developed cracks are diverted with the help of vascular bundles which are oriented in a particular angle to do the job. So Endocarp works as the cushion which traps any crack before it reaches the other end.

Now depending on the study, the particular arrangement of vascular bundles could be pushed to design textile fibres within functionally graded concrete, the primary material for making multistoried. The idea is still in its nascent stage and requires investigation as in prototype formats. The complete research was published in Society for Experimental Biology Annual Meeting 2016.

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