Could bikes of the future be made from limpets’ teeth?

Scientists are always looking to the natural world for inspiration, and the latest development has an unlikely source. According a study published in the Royal Society journal Interface, limpet teeth may contain the strongest natural material known to man, goethite, which could one day be used for cars, boats, planes and even bicycles. 

According to researchers at the University of Portsmouth where the study was conducted, the material forms inside the limpet's teeth as it grows and could be stronger than spider’s silk, often reputed to be nature’s toughest material, and is, weight for weight, stronger than steel. 

The primary function of limpet teeth is to remove algae from rock surfaces to feed, and it could be possible to mimic the structure of the teeth and reproduced in high-performance engineering applications, for the construction of racing cars, boats and aircraft. And bicycle frames? Well, we’re a long way from that happening certainly, but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility.

"We discovered that the fibres of goethite are just the right size to make up a resilient composite structure," commented Professor Asa Barber, who led the research study.

He adds: "This discovery means that the fibrous structures found in limpet teeth could be mimicked and used in high-performance engineering applications such as Formula One racing cars, the hulls of boats and aircraft structures.

"Engineers are always interested in making these structures stronger to improve their performance or lighter so they use less material."

To dig a bit deeper into the potential of this new material, we asked someone a lot cleverer than us to have a look at the research paper. We asked Trev Allen, who has a Engineering Doctorate (EngD) in Composites Manufacture, if he agrees with the headline of this article, “Could bikes of the future be made from limpets’ teeth?” Here’s what he has to say.

“In short, the answer is no. This is just the media finding a paper and jumping on it. There are many more technological developments and improvements that are lower hanging fruit than deploying limpets’ teeth in composites. Can you imagine Specialized walking down to the beach, harvesting limpets and then extracting their teeth and machining them into useable form?

“The good news for all of us is that bikes made from carbon fibre reinforced plastic are far from optimised. There are thousands of researchers working globally on technological advancements in the field of composite materials (and the UK is at the forefront of that in many respects) which (a) stand to improve the performance of the bicycle and (b) are at a much higher technology readiness level.

"The current CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic) material systems available to engineers and the desired performance requirements typically make the bicycle frame a stiffness-dominated design. By this I mean when stiffness targets are met in a design, the strength requirements are usually long since surpassed (with the caveat that there is interplay between strength/stiffness and manufacturing process/quality control which shouldn't be ignored - it's not just a pure material system problem).

“So even if limpets' teeth did stand to improve the strength of the material system, this might not mean we would want to shed any material from a bicycle frame, yet.”

So there you go. Bicycles might not be benefiting from limpets' teeth anytime soon.

You can view the full research paper and how the testing was conducted here http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/9/71/1318