Deformation micromechanics of spider silk

The effects of fiber structure upon the micromechanics of deformation of spider silks produced at different processing speeds have been examined, using Raman Spectroscopy. Silk were produced with different microstructures and mechanical properties from spiders by spinning at different speeds ranging from 0.5 mms-1 to 128mms-1. Silk fiber produced using different reeling speeds were observed to have different values of initial Young's modulus and different rates of band shifts at 1095 cm-1. The fibers with the highest level of modulus tended to have the lowest shift rate. Silks were found to have lower Young's modulus while being very much more extensible, which lead to their outstanding levels of toughness. The parallel arrangement of the crystal reduced the Young's modulus of the fibers significantly, while allowing the fibers to have much higher levels of extensibility through deformation of softer amorphous phase.