Hierarchical intentional breaking interfaces

Illustration of a fracture through a gemstone metamaterial technology part designed with hierarchical intentional breaking surfaces. Bright green is by far most likely to happen and likely fully reversible without any covalent bond breaking damage. Cyan and blue are fractures of higher strength interfaces at smaller scales that are massively increasingly more unlikely too happen. Red is extremely unlikely to happen or rather FAPP never happens (unless very intentonal efforts are taken) as needed speed impacts would cause hypervelocity thermal damage of different nature instead. Red would break open the sealed internal volume of a e.g. microcomponent destroying internals be exposure to oxygen air and dirt. See: Fruit interior analogy. More discussion in the main text. Square unist are just used for simplicity for the illustration. They could be hexagonal or really any shape too which would obviously influence the breaking behavior.

The interior of advanced nanosystems is likely highly sensitive to oxygen and water as keeping oxygen (and water) out gives much more design freedom in viable nanomachinery surfaces. Much like fruit when cut or broken open the internals will quickly irreversibly degrade by oxidization. Much like fruit releasing volatile molecules (smell) broken open advanced nanoystems may have some nonzero tendency to spill some of their internal crystolecule guts. Unlike with fruit damage of internal machinery and spill of internal machinery that is not very desirable. The design principle of "Hierarchical intentional breaking interfaces" should allow for designing systems that almost never break open to the point or exposing and spilling there sensitive and possibly toxic internals. For the very rare and few cases it still happens this should be "easy" to repair (e.g. via on chip microcomponent recomposers) and clean up. The See: Spill prevention guideline & Oxidation.

Objectives

To …

• prevent spill of non-degradable nano-materials and
• maximize on recycling of microcomponents and crystolecules and
• make for convenients and quickly possible repair

… the gemstone based metamaterials of gem-gum technology can (and hopefully will) be designed accordingly.

A warning to addressed to future gem-gum metamaterial system designers

In reality it is likely that many gemstone based metamaterials
will not adhere to good system design. Hopefully not most.
Meaning these materials may break, crumble, and spill undegradable nanomaterial dust
and add to a rapidly growing pile of gem-gum waste as it turned out to be cheaper to make new parts rather than repair old broken ones
as it turned out so due to historically accumulating neglect and tech debt in lack of focus on things that matter for spill prevention and recycling.
See: Gem-gum waste crisis dystopia.

The Approach

The approach presented there uses a hierarchy of intentional breaking interfaces.
The intentional breaking interfaces get increasingly stronger the smaller scales one reaches.

This makes more undesired breaking of the smaller scale intentional breaking interfaces exponentially more unlikely.
And true uncontrolled breaking below the smallest scale intentional breaking interfaces FAPP never happening. Fulfilling the objectives nicely.

Scale dependent connection method or choice

The connection method changes with scale as what is most natural for the different scales.
Largest scale connection will often have the most freedom for fancy features.
Possibly even active inbuilt auto-cleaning and auto-aligning.

Effect of mechanical attacks

Effect of blunt kinetic hits

A blunt kinetic hit with a hammer or a projectile will …

• either break of larger parts in a way controlled by the material
• or have no effect at all (beside warming) due to emulated elasticity atop the hierarchical breaking (see below)
• or be so energetic that it causes melt/evaporation which crosses over into thermal damage and thermal attack.

Similarly for a tooth or a saw over a sharp edge. Poor saw.

Steady crushing (or pulling)

The only ways to get breaks at the smaller scales is slow and steady anisotrpic crushing pressure like in a hydraulic press.
Pressing from the onto corners or edges with same or similar materials.
Or pulling in a tensile strength test. The bigger part wins.
Well really exotic metamaterials might just get thinner and tinner and weaker an weaker (an that reversibly) but never break as one would need to pull for millions of kilometers to get to a nano mono chain and finally break that.

Large scale nanoscale homogeneous metamaterials

These include: infinitesimal bearings & motor muscles.
Fancy interfaces changing with scale are not or limitedly possible with these.

Extraordinary mechanical toughness when in combination with emulated elasticity

Flexing can redirect small scale loads to larger scales giving an additional factor for larger pieces to break off first.
But in practice toughness may become so incredibly high (way beyond today's bets steels) that that practically never happens.

This could make mechanical destruction (intentional attempt or not) almost impossible.
Attemping to mechanical cutting sawing drilling of gem-gum metamaterials by subtractive tools is a bad idea as

• this will destroy the tools quickly if nade from hardened steel or even cutting bits
• this may cause undesired spill of fine nanomaterial id one manages to succeed (likely by other gem-gum metamaterial cutting toolsmeant for conventional non-gem-gum materials)

When trying to cut, saw, or drill into these elasticiyty emulating materials, they will flex back and evade.
Hard to impossible to even get a cut (if one can call it that) stated.

There'll be no luck crushing it with a hammer. Way to toughs. Not even permanent plastic deformation.
Other metamaterials may not be as mechanically toughened and thus crushable to fine dust,
but they may report your environment polluting actions to the authorities. Explain or pay.

High pressure water cutter attack may be an interesting test case.
There are no passive materials that can withstand that for long.
Diamond or sapphire hardness plus nanoscale bounce-back combined may make the process of cutting much slower.

Materials with active defense against mechanical attacks

This goes into defensive weaponry territory.
So long active materials are connected to power an material source
they could (beside defending by emulated elasticity and active motion)
also quickly replenish material losses (and self repair)
making the materials nigh mechanically indestructible.

Related would be clouds of highly specialized anti bullet utility fog
behaving a bit like infinitesimal bearings for catching anticipated projectiles
by hugely pre-densifying the projectiles calculated trajectory to make it as if
the projectile would hit a many meters thick wall of high density material.

When it comes to hypervelocity projectiles this already goes more into thermal damage than mechanical damage
as the catchers will juts instantly evaporate on contact if not matching the speed first (which is likely not possibly, but one needs closer analysis)
Every catch means a loss of material which might push towards …

• deeply penetrative radiation weaponry
• underground attacks on underground infrastructure supply lines

All scary stuff.

Related

• Oxidation
• Fruit interior analogy
• Emulated elasticity
• Convergent assembly
• Microcomponents
• Components
• Terminology for parts
• Spill prevention guideline & Spill of sub microscale objects
• Cleavage planes
• Recycling & Gem-gum waste dystopia
• Mechanical damage and repair
• (Mechanical stability)

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• Repair & Self repairing system
• Bigger surface area of smaller machinery

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• gemstone based metamaterials of gem-gum technology
• connection method

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• Somewhat odd idea: gem gum metamaterial machining bits for processing non gem-gum materials (metals, plasics, wood, …)