Hello, A new project on the LCRC cluster has been requested. Please forward the information on to the LCRC Allocation sub-committee. Applicant's name: James Grudzinski Applicant's institution: ANL Applicant's division: NE Project Name: Enamel Project title: Fracture toughness characterization of fossilized tooth enamel using high resolution finite element simulation Associated funding: Work is supported through NE engineering operations overhead funding. Other Systems: Eddy2 cluster in NE division, unlimited time Science: Teeth are used for energy intake in physical/mechanical interaction with the environment, so the mechanics of dental function are under strong selective pressure as considered from an evolutionary biology perspective. Studies of dental design—the relationship of dental form with diet, function, and feeding behavior—are not only important for understanding feeding biology in living animals but, because teeth fossilize so well, for understanding the functional principles governing the evolution of mineralized biologic tissue (MBT) diversity. The fracture toughness of enamel is three times higher than that of inorganic hydroxyapatite, so mammalian teeth do not fracture as commonly as one might expect. This is due to the complicated, hierarchical microstructure of enamel that provides a natural experiment in which variation at five hierarchical levels is important in determining tooth mechanical properties. Importantly however, in order to optimize dental function tooth enamel microstructure must not only resist brittle fracture, but control abrasive wear during occlusion (tooth-tooth contact). For example, controlled wear of rodent incisors is necessary to maintain an effective chisel shape as the teeth grow continually. The key question in the study of enamel design is not how teeth minimize fracture and wear resistance, but: how is variation in diet and feeding behaviour related to variation in the resistance of enamel to abrasion and fracture, and how this is related to variation in morphology throughout the enamel microstructural hierarchy (from crystallites to teeth)? Project description: The tooth enamel mesostructure is formed as prismatic rods on the order of 5 micron in diameter. Fossilized mammal teeth have been imaged in the APS which resolve this prism detail in the form of voxelized CT data. The CT data will be converted to a finite element mesh giving a high resolution continuum view of the enamel structure. Due to the resolution, these meshes will be large. Finite element analysis will be performed to to assess the fracture toughness of the teeth in order to address the scientific question. The initial software used will be the Diablo finite element code which is already installed on the Blues/Fusion cluster. The expected number of project users will be approximately 3. Industry partnership: none Project URL: Requested allocation: 10000 Q1: 2500 Q2: 2500 Q3: 2500 Q4: 2500 Justification: Storage requirements: The requester has used undetermined amount hours of their initial startup project. In addition to approving an initial amount, please specify a Category and Subcategory for this project. For a list of the current selection of approved categories, please see: https://wiki.lcrc.anl.gov/wiki/Processes/Categories Once the Allocation committee has approved the project, please go to the Project Management page to create it: https://accounts.lcrc.anl.gov/projects.php Thank You, The LCRC Accounts System