Elephant Trunk Skin: Nature’s Flexible Kevlar

2020

Conference Paper

hi

Elephants can extend their trunks by 20% in order to reach faraway objects. Muscular hydrostats such as earthworms, tongues, and octopus arms are all known to have similar levels of extensibility. However, the large and heavy trunk has the added constraints of being durable as well. In this study, we perform material testing on skin sections of the elephant trunk. This skin varies along the trunk with the dorsal portion having folds and the ventral portion having wrinkles. In tensile tests, the folds have ten times the strain as flat portions of skin, and wrinkles having three times the strain as flat portions. To better interpret the strains observed in tensile testing, we perform numerical simulations of elastic material with wrinkles and folds. We show that wrinkles and folds are a good solution for providing strength and extensibility.

@conference{Schulz20-IROS-Kevlar,
  title = {Elephant Trunk Skin: Nature's Flexible Kevlar},
  author = {Schulz, Andrew and Fourney, Emily and Sordilla, Sophia and Sukhwani, Ajay and Hu, David},
  booktitle = {IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
  publisher = {IEEE},
  month = oct,
  year = {2020},
  doi = {},
  month_numeric = {10}
}