The stress transfer mechanism of nacre-like composites under off-axis tensile loading

Nacre exhibits excellent mechanical properties attributed to the staggered alignment of inorganic minerals and bio-organic materials. This study aims to understand how stress transfers from macro-scale loading conditions to the staggered architecture, revealing multiple stress transfer modes in nacre-like composites under off-axis tensile loading conditions. We propose an innovative off-axis tension-shear chain model, which predicts the trend of the equivalent modulus. Systematic optimization reveals a counter-intuitive result: the equivalent modulus at a certain angle can be smaller than the equivalent moduli in both principal directions, and this phenomenon differs from the monotonic behavior commonly observed in continuous fiber composite materials.