Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles
Structural and Mechanical Properties of Staghorn Coral (Acropora cervicornis) CaCO3 Aragonite Skeletons, Cleaned by Chemical Bleaching and Biological Processes
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Advances in Applied Ceramics
ISSN
1743-6761
Publication Date
9-9-2020
Keywords
Mechanical properties, Microstructure, Porous materials, CaCO3 aragonite, Coral skeleton
Abstract
Coral reefs provide habitat for most oceanic life forms, however, they are declining worldwide due to pollution, increased ocean temperature, diseases and other factors. In this paper, structural and mechanical properties of endangered coral (Acropora cervicornis) skeletons cleaned by chemical bleaching and biological processes were studied. The structure of CaCO3 aragonite skeleton is porous and very complex and affects the deformation behaviour of coral skeletons. The average compressive strength was equal to 9.5 ± 2.3 MPa and 14.5 ± 6.4 MPa, while Vickers hardness was measured to be equal to 3.67 ± 0.33 GPa and 3.65 ± 0.24 GPa for the chemically bleached and biologically cleaned skeletons, respectively, thus showing similar values regardless of the cleaning techniques. The results are important for understanding the fundamental relationship between the coral skeleton’s microstructure and mechanical behaviour.
DOI
10.1080/17436753.2020.1815500
Additional Comments
NSF MRI award #: 133775; NSF award #: 0959511
NSUWorks Citation
Mahmoud Omer, Alejandro Carrasco-Pena, Nina Orlovskaya, Boyce E. Collins, Sergey N. Yarmolenko, Jagannathan Sankar, Ghatu Subhash, David S. Gilliam, and John E. Fauth. 2020. Structural and Mechanical Properties of Staghorn Coral (Acropora cervicornis) CaCO3 Aragonite Skeletons, Cleaned by Chemical Bleaching and Biological Processes .Advances in Applied Ceramics . https://nsuworks.nova.edu/occ_facarticles/1123.
Comments
©2020 Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. Published by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the Institute.