International Journal of Impact Engineering 57 (2013) 17e26

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International Journal of Impact Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijimpeng

Behaviour of luffa sponge material under dynamic loading

Jianhu Shen a, Yi Min Xie a, *, Xiaodong Huang a, Shiwei Zhou a, Dong Ruan b
a
b

Centre for Innovative Structures and Materials, School of Civil, Environmental and Chemical Engineering, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne 3001, Australia
Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, John Street, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 11 July 2012
Received in revised form
7 January 2013
Accepted 13 January 2013
Available online 5 February 2013

Luffa sponge is a light-weight natural material which has the potential to be used as an alternative
sustainable material for various engineering applications such as packaging, acoustic and vibration
isolation, and impact energy absorption. The strain rate effect is an important material property for such
applications. In the present study, compressive tests at different strain rates on luffa sponge material
were conducted over a wide density range from 24 to 64 kg m
3. A photographic technique was applied
to measure the sectional area which has an irregular shape. The stressestrain curves of luffa sponge
material at various strain rates were calculated based on this measurement. When the dynamic data are
compared with those of quasi-static experiments, it is found that the compressive strength, plateau
stress and specic energy absorption of the luffa sponge material are all sensitive to the rate of loading. It
is also found that the dynamic enhancement for the compressive strength was more prominent than that
for the plateau stress. The underlying mechanism was discussed and claried. Empirical formulae were
proposed for the macroscopic strength, densication strain and specic energy absorption at various
strain rates. A comparison study shows that the luffa sponge has better energy absorption capacity per
unit mass than other cellular materials with similar plateau stress at various strain rates.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Luffa sponge
Energy absorption
Strain rate
Biological material
Sustainability

1. Introduction
Cellular materials are commonly used as packaging and cladding materials to protect products and personnel during collision
and impact events [1]. The mechanical characterization of those
cellular materials at varying strain rates is essential for their efcient use in dynamic loading applications. As we approach the limit
of non-renewable natural resources, there is an increasingly urgent
need to nd alternative materials that full not only the mechanical
stability but also some integrated multi-functional properties with
low environmental impact and renewable source of reproduction
[2]. The fruits of Luffa Cylindrica (LC) have a netting-like brous
vascular system. When they are dried, the brous network structure serves like an open cell foam material. In a recent research [3],
it has been proved that the luffa sponge is potential to be used as an
alternative sustainable material for various practical applications
such as packaging, acoustic and vibration isolation, and impact
energy absorption. The luffa sponge material can be derived from
fruit of the LC plant and has recycling capability and triggered
biodegradability [4,5]. The importance of the luffa sponge material

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 61 3 9925 3655.

E-mail address: mike.xie@rmit.edu.au (Y.M. Xie).
0734-743X/$ e see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijimpeng.2013.01.004

is growing in our society because of the search for sustainable solutions using new materials. In a recent study [3], the authors
discovered that under quasi-static loading the luffa sponge material
exhibits remarkable stiffness, strength and energy absorption capacities that are comparable to those of a variety of metallic cellular
materials.
A limited amount of research has been conducted on the luffa
sponge as a source of bio-bres and bio-composites in the last ten
years. The previous research indicated that it is a potential alternative material for water absorption [6,7], and waste water treatment [8,9]. The luffa bres were also used as reinforcement bre for
other materials [10e14] and cell immobilization for biotechnology
[15e18]. At the same time, the sponge gourd of LC, the origin of luffa
sponge material, has not yet had their potential fully explored. With
regard to the industrial and technological development, the cost of
fuel is on the increase. Oil is extracted from seeds for industrial use
[6]. The seed of LC is used as oil sources. The oil extracted from LC is
nding increasing use in the production of biodiesel which is now
gaining acceptance because of low CO2 emission and other considerations [19].
However, there is a lack of scientic data on the mechanical
properties of luffa sponge material because up to now its main
practical use has been as a body scrub in the bathroom. The luffa
sponge material and luffa bres have so far found very limited

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J. Shen et al. / International Journal of Impact Engineering 57 (2013) 17e26

practical applications due to a lack of experimental data. To the best

knowledge of the authors, no experimental investigation has ever
been conducted on the dynamic properties of the luffa sponge
material.
In this paper, dynamic mechanical properties of luffa sponge
columns were tested to investigate performance of this lightweight material. Uniaxial dynamic compressive tests were conducted at strain rates of 100 and 102 s
1 by using a High Rate Instron
machine to study the dynamic strength and energy absorption of
the luffa sponge material. Cylindrical specimens with different
relative densities were tested at a room temperature of 22  C and
a humidity of around 40%. An energy efciency method was
adopted to obtain the values of the densication strain and plateau
stress, and thus the energy absorption capacity per unit volume. The
experimental results were discussed together with quasi-static data
from our previous research [3] and other popular cellular materials.
2. Experiments
2.1. Specimens
The luffa sponge material used in our experiments is from
a pharmacy in Australia which is sold as a bath sponge. A brief
treatment procedure for manufacturing these bath sponges from
natural luffa fruits was provided by the supplier. The luffa fruits
were harvested after they were fully mature with their skin turning
brown. The dried luffa fruits were slightly squashed laterally to
crack and remove the skin. Then the two ends of luffa fruits were
cut and the seeds were removed. The original luffa sponges were
bleached using liquid chlorine bleach (4%) for about 1 h to improve
their appearance by making them whiter. After that, they were
soaked in clean water for half an hour and then dried in the sun. The
chemical composition of the luffa sponge depends on several factors, such as plant origin, weather condition, soil, pre-treatment,
etc. A set of reference values for the chemical composition of LC
foam can be found in a previous research [20].
In the present study, dynamic uniaxial compressive tests were
conducted at two strain rates, namely, 1 and 102 s
1 to obtain the
properties of luffa sponge material under dynamic loading with
different strain rates. For each strain rate, about 30 specimens were

tested with different density range from 25 to 65 kg m
3. All the

tests were performed at a room temperature of 22  C and humidity
of approximately 40%.
According to the standard of compressive tests and recent
research [21] on other cellular materials, the specimen size effect is
negligible for foams when the dimension of a specimen is sufciently larger than the cell size, i.e. 7 times of the cell size for
metallic foams. Thus the specimen for luffa sponge should be large
enough to eliminate the specimen size effect. The available maximum size along radial direction for luffa sponge is the whole
section of the luffa sponge column. It was used as the cross section
of the specimen which ranges from 55 mm to 86 mm in diameter.
The height of the specimen was selected as around 50 mm in our
tests. Fig. 1 shows a typical specimen for a dynamic compressive
test. The luffa sponge column is composed of luffa bres. Those
bres interconnect with each other and form networks with microtrusses. Fig. 1 also shows the principal orientation of the luffa bres
vary with the location in the specimen in a regular pattern. On the
inner surface, the thickest luffa bre grows along longitudinal direction which is along the dynamic compressive direction. While
on the outer surface, the thickest luffa bre grows along circumferential direction. In the interlayer between the inner surface and
outer surface, the bre grows in all three directions. In the core
region, the strongest luffa bre is along radial direction. A further
microscopic view of the cross section of the luffa bre reveals that
the luffa sponge is a material with hierarchical architectures as
shown in Fig. 1.
A bandsaw was used to cut the specimen from an initial dried
luffa bath sponge. After the initial cutting, the specimens were
milled further to make the two cutting surface smooth and parallel.
For most of the specimens, the cross sectional area at two ends of
the specimen are different, thus besides the specimen, two thin
slices (about 5 mm thick) were cut from the two ends of the luffa
sponge to be used as samples to measure the cross sectional area of
a luffa sponge specimen. Because the cross section for most of the
specimens is not perfect circular, a photograph for each slice was
taken and Photoshop was used to get the area of the cross section.
Then the sectional area of the specimen is the average of these two
slices. The volume of the luffa sponge specimen is the product of
this cross sectional area and the height of the specimen.

Fig. 1. A luffa sponge specimen with a diameter of 64 mm and illustration of its hierarchical microstructures. The photographs in the middle indicate the orientation of the luffa
bre; and the photographs at the right present the microstructures of luffa bres. Those photographs were taken from different specimens.

J. Shen et al. / International Journal of Impact Engineering 57 (2013) 17e26

2.2. Test equipment

Fig. 2. Experimental setup for dynamic compressive tests on luffa sponge material (the
specimens shown are only for the test group with a strain rate of 1 s
1).

Displacement (u/150 mm)

-1
Velocity (v/5 ms )
Drive (V/2.88 v)
Compressive force (F/1.6 kN)

2.0
1.5
1.0

Normalised data

The dynamic tests were performed using a High Rate Instron

Test System with two different drive methods. A low rate method
was selected for strain rate around 1 s
1 and a high rate method
with a drive prole was adopted for the other strain rate, i.e. 102 s
1.
A photograph of the dynamic experimental setup is shown in
Fig. 2(a). The specimen was placed on the bottom compression
platen which was positioned at a considerable long distance from
the top platen at the beginning of each test. The specimen was
accelerated to the required velocity across that distance before the
top surface of the specimen touched the top platen. Double sided
sticky tape was used to retain the specimen on the bottom platen
and avoid any possible slippage of the specimen. The surface friction effect is an important factor for most compression test. To
minimize this effect, the double sided glue was only applied to the
centre region of the cross section for most of the specimens except
for the very rst several trial specimens. Moreover, it should be
noted that the friction effect on the uniaxial plateau stress is not so
signicant for crushable cellular materials, because the Poissons
ratio during the compression in plateau region of a specimen is
close to 0.
When the top surface of the specimen touched the top platen,
the bottom platen and specimen began to decelerate, which
resulted in a dropping strain rate during the compression process.
High Rate Instron Test System provides a feedback mechanism by
its FastTrack VHS 8800 controller to change the drive prole of
the hydraulic system according to the force history from experimental data. Thus a relatively constant loading rate can be achieved during later experiments. The initial drive prole is a constant
value. It can be increased according to the force history obtained by
the load cell to obtain the new drive prole. The consistency of the
strain rate during compression of the specimen can be improved
further by iterating the procedure several times. However, due to
the variation of the compressive force of luffa sponge specimens
caused by variation of density, little improvement was achieved
after practically two iterations. Thus drive proles obtained from
specimens with density around 40 kg m
3 after two iterations were
selected for all the rest tests at the strain rate of 102 s
1 as shown in
Fig. 3(a). The effect of drive proles after iteration on force displacement curves was similar to that for aluminium foams in our
previous study [22].

19

0.5
0.0
0.02
-0.5

0.04

0.06

Time (s)

-1.0
-1.5
-2.0

Effective region for compressive tests

See Figure 4 (b)

Fig. 3. Illustration of the overall compression process of high strain rate tests on luffa
sponge specimen (All signals were normalised by an average value for better visual
effect).

A constant speed of 5 m s
1 with a sampling rate of 500 kHz was

used for dynamic compression tests at a strain rate of 102 s
1. The
load history was measured by a Kistler load cell 9071A without data
lter. The displacement history was measured by an inherent LVDT
with data lter by setting cut off frequency of 1000 Hz.
The displacement and load curves were obtained and the
average compressive force, densication strain and energy absorption were worked out accordingly. The humidity during the
test was monitored by a humidity meter as shown in Fig. 2. The
specimens were placed in the test room for at least 2 h before the
compressive test to eliminate the difference in temperature and
humidity. The temperature in the test room was from 20 to 28  C,
but the temperature variation during each test was less 1  C. The
humidity was between 30% and 60%, but during each test its variation was less 1%.

3. Experimental results
3.1. Deformation features
Force and displacement histories were obtained from the Instron machine (VHS 8800). A typical force displacement curves are
shown in Fig. 4(a). Similar to other cellular materials, the overall
compressive behaviour can be characterised by a steep elastic region up to compressive strength, a plateau collapse region up to
densication, and a densication region with a sharp increase of
force over displacement. Despite of trivial differences, the curve
also shows clearly a fairly constant compressive force over a long
stroke, which represents an ideal energy absorption feature.
Nominal stress (dened as force over original cross sectional area)
and nominal strain (dened as displacement over original thickness of the luffa sponge specimen) were calculated and shown in
Fig. 4(b) for a different specimen in Fig. 4(a). The deformation
patterns at high strain rate of 102 s
1 are shown in Fig. 5. This
conrms that the overall compression of the specimen is axial
(along the longitudinal direction) rather than folding of the wall of
the specimen under dynamic loading. Localised crushing band was
observed in plateau collapse region which is similar to the quasistatic compressive behaviour of luffa sponge material.
The deformation was uniform in the elastic range before it
reached compressive strength. Localised crush bands were observed
in plateau collapse region, and the initial strain for localised

20

J. Shen et al. / International Journal of Impact Engineering 57 (2013) 17e26

Plateau force
to calculate
plateau stress

Peak force to
calculate
compressive
strength

(a) a typical force-displacement curve with three regions for luffa sponge material.
0.0

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

Compressive stress (MPa)

Energy efficiency
Energy absorption

1.2
1.0

50

40

Dynamic compressive strength

0.67 MPa

0.8

0.8
60

Plateau stress
0.52 MPa

30

0.6
20
0.4

Densification strain
10
0.578

Energy absorption (J/m )

0.2
0.0
0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

Energy efficiency (%)

Compressive stress (MPa)

1.4

0.1

0.5

0.6

0.7

0
0.8

Strain

(b) the illustration of using energy efficiency method to determine compressive strength and
calculate plateau stress, densification strain and energy absorption capacity.
Fig. 4. Dynamic compressive history data for luffa sponge material.

deformation varied with different specimens. The strain remains

uniform until the strain reached about 0.2 as shown in Fig. 5. Then
localise deformation occurred in the weakest layer of the specimen.
As the crushing proceeded, further deformation still occurred in this
layer but with other layers collapsing simultaneously which formed
several crushing bands. Sometimes, the latter collapsing bands
developed at a higher degree of distortion than the previous ones.
Deformation kinematics as well as the high strain rate effect due to
localized deformation resulted in subsequent hardening so as to lock
the collapse band before densication, which allowed other bands
to collapse sequentially as well.
3.2. Dynamic compressive strength
The stressestrain curves were further calculated and a typical
stressestrain curve is shown in Fig. 4(b) together with the illustration of energy efciency method to calculate densication strain,

plateau stress and energy absorption capacity. The dynamic compressive strength of the luffa sponge material is taken to be the
initial peak stress if it exists. If there is no such peak stress, the
stress at the intersection of two slopes is taken to be the compressive strength, namely, the slope for the initial loading and that
for the stress plateau region. In general, the compressive strength of
the luffa specimen increases with the density. However, for similar
density, the strength varies greatly as well. This is expected,
because other research [3] indicated that the component material
of luffa sponge varied with the weather, maturity, soil etc. For
a traditional rate sensitive material, the strain rate effect is independent on the density of the material. In similar research for
metallic foams [22], it was found that the strength enhancement
ratio with respect to strain rate exhibited a power law relationship.
This relationship is difcult to verify for luffa sponge material due
to the scatter in its mechanical properties. Thus the following formula similar to that for metal foams [22] will be adopted for the

J. Shen et al. / International Journal of Impact Engineering 57 (2013) 17e26

21

Fig. 5. Deformation patterns of luffa sponge under dynamic impact (V0 5.0 m s
1, L 52.0 mm; High Speed Cameral settings: frame rate: 10,000 frame per second, shutter speed:
1/50,000, resolution: 512  512 pixels).

compressive strength, plateau stress, and energy absorption of luffa

sponge material.

 r


s0
$P
0
A 1 C
sf
rf

!B
(1)

where, sf is the yield stress of the base material, rf is the density of

the base material, s0 and r0 are the compressive strength and
density of the luffa sponge, _ is the strain rate, C and P are two
constants determined by the strain rate effect of cellular material, A
and B are two constants determined by the topology and failure
patterns of cellular material. However, as a natural cellular material,
luffa sponge has hierarchical microstructures. As mentioned previously, the base solid material of luffa sponge remained unknown
at the present due to the lack of scientic data on the mechanical

properties of luffa sponge material. The luffa sponge column

specimen in our experiment is composed of luffa bres. Our tensile
test results on luffa bres indicated that the density and tensile
strength of luffa bres varied with their orientation in a luffa
sponge. For the same orientation at the similar location, they also
varied with different specimens. It cannot be used as an effective
base material at one hierarchical level. Thus the empirical formulae
are given in the following format:

$P

s0 A 1 C rB0

(2)

The unknown base material properties will be included in the

coefcients A. Coefcients C, B and P are non-dimensional values
and are determined by the microstructures and strain rate effect of
the luffa sponge material. By tting the quasi-static data, the

22

J. Shen et al. / International Journal of Impact Engineering 57 (2013) 17e26

coefcient B can be obtained as 1.28. Then, we x B and use the

experimental data obtained from strain rate 10
3, 1 and 102 s
1 to
determine the other three different coefcients: A, C and P, which
are 1946.8, 0.43 and 0.15 respectively.
The calculated values of the term inside the rst set of brackets,
1 0:43_0:15 , are from 1.15 to 1.86 corresponding to strain rates
from 10
3e102 s
1. The dynamic enhancement for the compressive
strength is more prominent than other cellular materials. Fig. 6
shows a favourable comparison between the compressive
strength from the empirical formula and corresponding experimental data, for luffa sponge with different relative densities and
at three strain rates.
3.3. Densication strain, plateau stress and energy absorption
capacity using energy efciency method
The stress level for energy absorption against impact is one of the
key parameters in designing the protective structures. It is normally
dened as the average stress over the plateau region. The compressive strength, s0, corresponds to the collapse of the weakest
layer of cells which is crushed rst in compression and it is underestimated the stress level as indicated in Fig. 4(a). Or it is the initial
dynamic buckling load due to the orientation of luffa bre along
loading direction which may overestimate the stress level as shown
in Fig. 4(b). Hence, the compressive strength is not applicable to
represent the stress level for energy dissipation of luffa sponge
material in compression. The plateau stress, spl, obtained using an
energy efciency method [23] is more appropriate and accurate to
be used as the stress level during energy dissipation process.
The energy dissipation efciency, Ed, of the luffa sponge at
a particular strain, a, is dened as

Za
 
Ed a

sd
sa

0  a  1

(3)

where sa is the stress at a. The densication strain, d, is dened as

the maximum value of i which satises the condition of maximum
efciency,


dEd a 
d 

Then, the plateau stress spl is calculated as

Zd

spl

(5)

The densication strain corresponds phenomenally to the start

point from which the stress starts rising sharply and physically to
the end of compression of all large voids in the material. From this
point onwards, the luffa sponge can still dissipate energy by plastic
deformation, but its dissipation efciency will start to decrease as
shown in Fig. 4(b). Fig. 7 presents the trend of densication strain
with respect to increasing strain rate. In general, the densication
strain decreases slightly with strain rate. Compared with the effect
of density, this drop is negligible and will be ignored in our current
analysis.
Based on the present experimental data, the densication strain
is linearly related to the density of the luffa sponge. Hence

d 0:68
1:6  10
3 r0

(6)

Following the similar argument for compressive strength, the

empirical formula for plateau stress is obtained as follows.

spl 2328 1 0:375_0:14 r1:22

0

(7)

The calculated values of the term inside the bracket,

1 0:375_0:08 , are from 1.14 to 1.71 corresponding to strain rates
from 10
3e102 s
1. The dynamic enhancement for the compressive
strength is more prominent than the plateau stress. Fig. 8 shows
a favourable comparison between the plateau stress from empirical
formula and corresponding experimental data, for luffa sponge
with different relative densities and at several strain rates.
As shown in Fig. 2, the load cell was xed on the top platen.
Therefore, the measured force included the inertial force (the force
required to stop the specimen from moving at 5 ms
1) of the
specimen. The average stress enhancement in the plateau collapse
region caused by the inertia of specimen can be estimated using the
theorem of momentum as

r AL
r v2
m
v 0 v A 0
L
d
t
d
v
r v2
; thus; si 0
d

Ft mv0F
a i

0;

0  i  1

(4)

si A F
0.80

0.65
0.60
0.55

(8)

0.6

0.5

Densification strain

0.70

and

-1

Strain rate =10 s

0 -1
Strain rate =10 s
-3 -1
Strain rate =10 s
2 -1
Eq. (2) (10 s )
0 -1
Eq. (2) (10 s )
-3 -1
Eq. (2) (10 s )

0.75

Compressive strength (MPa)

sd

0.50
0.45
0.40
0.35
0.30

0.4
2

0.2

0.25

0.1

0.20

-1

Strain rate = 10 s
0 -1
Strain rate = 10 s
-3 -1
Strain rate = 10 s
2 -1
Trend line for 10 s
0 -1
Trend line for 10 s
-3 -1
Trend line for 10 s

0.3

0.15

0.0

0.10
20

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

60

65

70

Density (kg/m )
Fig. 6. Strain rate effect on the dynamic compressive strength of luffa sponge material.

20

30

40

50

60

70

Density (kg/m )
Fig. 7. The strain rate effect on the densication strain of luffa sponge material.

J. Shen et al. / International Journal of Impact Engineering 57 (2013) 17e26

0.65

-3

0.55
0.50

Plateau stress (MPa)

value is equal to the area under the stressestrain curve. Fig. 9 shows
that the energy dissipation capacity per unit volume increases
favourably with the strain rate. It indicates that luffa sponge material will dissipate more energy under dynamic loading. Thus the
energy dissipation capacity for the range of strain rates considered
can be written as,

-1

Strain rate=10 s
0 -1
Strain rate=10 s
2 -1
Strain rate=10 s
-3 -1
Eq. (7) (10 s )
0 -1
Eq. (7) (10 s )
2 -1
Eq. (7) (10 s )

0.60

0.45






w 1583 1 0:375_0:14 r0
2:35  10
3 r2:22
0

0.40

0.30

3.4. Stress enhancement over strain rate

0.25

0.15
0.10
20

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

60

65

-3

Density (kg/m )
Fig. 8. Strain rate effect on the plateau stress of luffa sponge material.

where si is the nominal stress enhancement caused by the inertia

effect, A is the cross sectional area, L is the initial length, r0 is the
density of luffa sponge specimen, v is the compression velocity, t is
the duration of the inertial force, and d is the densication strain.
The expression is identical to that obtained from 1D structural
shock model which was put forward by Reid et al. [24] and further
developed by Harrigan et al. for cellular materials [25]. It should be
noted that the deformation pattern of the luffa sponge specimens
does not satisfy the requirements for 1D structural shock model in
the current loading velocity, i.e. 5 m s
1. For example, there is no
obvious shock front and the crush process of the sponge is not
sequential from the impact end etc. However, this estimation gives
an upper bound for the effect of inertial force on the plateau stress
of cellular material under compression. Consider two extreme cases
with maximum inertial force for our tests, i.e. r0 60 kg m
3,
d 0.6, V0 5 m s
1 and r0 20 kg m
3, d 0.6, V0 5 m s
1 the
value of stress si is only 0.8% and 0.59% of the measured static
plateau stress, 0.424 MPa and 0.104 MPa respectively. Thus this
inertia effect is small and can be neglected in our analysis for different strain rates.
The energy dissipation capacity of luffa sponge material can be
characterised by the energy absorption per unit initial volume, w,
during the compression process before densication occurs. This

(9)

0.35

0.20

Energy absorption per unit volume (MJ/m )

23

-1

Strain rate = 10 s
0 -1
Strain rate = 10 s
-3 -1
Strain rate = 10 s

0.35

0.30

0.25

0.20

0.15

0.10

0.05
20

30

40

50

60

70

Density (kg/m )
Fig. 9. Strain rate effect on the energy absorption capacity of luffa sponge material.

The possible mechanisms for strain rate effect of luffa sponge

material are entrapped gas in the luffa bre, viscosity of the base
composite material of luffa sponge, collapse pattern change of luffa
bres, initial inertia of the specimen, and inertia effect of luffa bres
(type II structure [26e28]). The inertia effect of luffa bres refers to
the effect that the bres along impact direction will undergo more
axial deformation under dynamic loading than that under quasistatic loading because of the constraint provided by the lateral
inertia of those bres and their surrounding bres. Similar to other
cellular materials, the rst three mechanisms will contribute to the
strain rate effect of plateau stress of the luffa sponge. However,
because the complexity of topology of luffa sponge and dimensional variation of luffa bres, it is very difcult to quantify the
contribution of air ow, viscosity of the base material of luffa
sponge, collapse pattern change of luffa bres to the stress
enhancement over strain rate. As for the last two mechanisms,
there was evidence from our experimental results to prove their
existence.
It is observed from Figs. 6 and 8 with corresponding empirical
formulae that the stress enhancement caused by strain rate effect
for the compressive strength is more than that for the plateau stress
for all specimens. For a similar average value (trend line) for compressive strength and plateau stress at quasi-static loading rate,
a direct comparison of compressive strength and plateau stress at
high strain rate in Fig. 10(a) conrms this trend because the all data
for compressive strength is higher than the data for the plateau
stress. It is also found that strength enhancement is more prominent for specimens whose stressestrain curves exhibit larger initial
peak behaviour as shown in Fig. 10(b). In the case of stressestrain
curves shown in Fig. 10(b), the compressive strength is taken as
the rst peak stress of the stressestrain curves. As the strain increases, the stress difference between quasi-static and dynamic
loading becomes smaller towards a xed value determined by the
difference of plateau stresses under two loading conditions. Only
the last two mechanisms will cause these phenomena. By changing
the duration, t, for inertial force in Eq. (8) from the overall deformation time, t Ld/v, to that during which the stress increases
from zero to rst peak stress (compressive strength), the initial
inertia enhancement on stress history can be estimated by adding
this inertial force to the plateau stress as is shown by the modied
plateau stress in Fig. 10(a). The duration, t, was measured directly
from corresponding stress-history data recorded in the experiments. It can be seen that this initial inertia effect plays an insignicant role in the compressive strength enhancement. To illustrate
this calculation, the specimen in Fig. 4(a) was taken as an example.
The corresponding deformation at the rst peak load is about
2 mm. Thus the duration is t 0.002/5 4  10
4 s. The inertial
force to stop the specimen with a mass of 10.5 g from 5 m s
1 to 0 in
such a short period can be calculated as Fi mv/t 10.5  10
3  5/
4  10
4 131 N. Therefore this effect only results in a slight
increase of the peak force, 2500 N.
From the stressestrain curves in Fig. 10(b), the stress enhancement pattern is similar to that of a typical type II structure studied by

24

J. Shen et al. / International Journal of Impact Engineering 57 (2013) 17e26

distribution along the bre walls. Thus it will be very difcult to

quantify the strength enhancement theoretically.

0.8

Compressive Stress (MPa)

0.7

4. Comparison and discussion

0.6

0.5

0.4

Compressive strength
Modified plateau stress (MPS)
Plateau stress (PS)
Linear fit of strength
Linear fit of MPS
Linear fit of PS

0.3

0.2

0.1
20

30

40

50

60

70

Density (kg/m )

(a) more prominent stress enhancement for strength than plateau;

0.8

Compressive stress (MPa)

Density = 41.6 kgm , strain rate = 10 s

Density = 42.4 kgm , strain rate = 10 s
0.6

Plateau stress
0.447 MPa
0.4

Plateau stress
0.266 MPa
0.2

0.0
0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

Strain

(b) stress-strain curves for dynamic and quasi-static tests of luffa sponge with type II
microstructures
Fig. 10. Comparison of the stress enhancement features over strain rate.

Calladine [26] and Su et al. [27,28]. It can be seen from Fig. 1 that the
orientations of the bres vary with their locations on the luffa
sponge specimen and the majority of the bres on the inner surface
of the specimen are along the loading direction. We believe that
those bres contribute more to the larger enhancement in the
compressive strength than that in the plateau stress for the luffa
sponge material. A special experiment was conducted in which the
nal crushing length of specimen was controlled to a strain of 30%
using an aluminium tube as a stopper. After that, the specimen was
cut to review the deformation of longitudinal bres on the inner
surface of the specimen as shown in Fig. 11(a). It can be seen clearly
that some of the bres deform outwards, which is similar to the
deformation mode of a half of the type II structure shown in
Fig. 11(b). Other bres serve as an additional mass along the longitudinal bres. The extra energy dissipated in the dynamic loading
process is caused by the axial plastic deformation of the bres along
the loading direction rather than by the bending of bres in the
quasi-static loading process. The length scale of bres with type II
behaviour varies with the imperfection in the alignment of these
longitudinal bres. Fig. 11(a) also shows the bending length is much
smaller on the other side of the luffa sponge specimen. Furthermore,
the photographic examinations performed on the inner surface of
luffa sponge specimens with various densities shows that the
maximum bre misalignments are highly scattered. Apart from this
imperfection at macroscopic level, individual bre walls as shown in
Fig. 1 possess further imperfections at smaller length scales that are
difcult to quantify such as the waviness or non-uniform thickness

As a cellular material, the luffa sponge is extremely light as has

been shown in our previous paper [3]. It is also at the lowest region
in the density range of natural biological cellular material cellular
materials previously studied [1]. However, our research results
indicate that, when the luffa column is compressed longitudinally
at a high strain rate, the amount of energy it can absorb per unit
mass is higher than many commonly used metallic foams [21,22]
and the polymer foams at similar strain rates and plateau
stresses, as shown in Fig. 12. It even exceeds the upper bond predicted by axial crushing of tube structures [29]. The excellent
specic energy absorption of luffa sponge is attributed partially to
its light base material and microstructures resulting in a higher
densication strain. Due to the high strength-to-weight ratio of
cellular materials and favourable enhanced energy absorption capacity at high strain rate, the luffa sponge can be used as a good
packaging material and an excellent energy dissipation material.
This special feature provides an opportunity to widen the applications of natural cellular materials in general and the luffa sponge
in particular, especially when light weight is a key design requirement. At the same time, when the density of the cellular materials
decrease to a certain range, other interesting functional properties
will emerge such as good damping and reversible properties [30].
Luffa sponge also exhibits several interesting functional features
such as water healing, recovery, and shape memory properties. We
are currently conducting further investigation on these very
important properties.
It is also worth noting that human beings have been able to
discover and develop many materials, notably various metals,
metallic alloys, ceramics, plastics, as well as their composites, with
performances signicantly surpassing biological materials [31,32].
When light weight of the material is considered, various metallic/
ceramic/polymeric foams, honeycombs, and microlattices, are
designed and fabricated using those materials as base materials.
However, most of these man-made materials are not environmentally friendly and have not been designed with genuine concerns over their long-term sustainability [32]. One possible solution
is to nd an alternative biological counterpart for those materials in
use if the sustainability is a dominant factor to be considered. Our
results conrm luffa sponge is such an alternative material. The
sustainability of the farming and preparation of luffa sponges
should be investigated further before this material becomes
a widely used commodity.
However, there are several limitations of the luffa sponge material. The luffa sponge material is not an isotropic material. The
mechanical properties at the lateral direction should be lower than
that at longitudinal direction. The energy absorption capacity per
unit mass of luffa sponge is lower than that of aluminium honeycombs and balsa woods which are highly anisotropic as shown in
Fig. 12. However there is no big block of luffa sponge available to
eliminate the possible size effect to obtain representative compressive properties along lateral direction. An approach has been
developed to manufacture large block of luffa sponge material from
available luffa sponge columns. The anisotropic properties of luffa
sponge material will be further investigated and the results will be
published in a separate paper.
It should be noted that the empirical formulae in this paper
are presented in a dimensional format which is a limitation of our
research. This is due to the lack of the mechanical properties of
the base composite materials as well as its specic composite
patterns of those base ingredients. The data and corresponding

J. Shen et al. / International Journal of Impact Engineering 57 (2013) 17e26

25

Fig. 11. Mechanism of the stress enhancement over strain rate for luffa sponge material.

prediction formulae for other hierarchical levels are not available.

As mentioned previously, the luffa sponge material is a cellular
material with structural hierarchy as shown in Fig. 1. The luffa
sponge column specimen is composed of luffa bres. According to

other research on the microstructures of luffa sponge material

[10e14], the luffa bres are hollow with many micro-tunnels.
Those microstructures have also observed in our own investigations. Similar to other natural cellular material with similar components, the cell walls of those micro-tunnels may be
brous themselves and consist of oriented cellulose nanobrils in
a hemicellulose and lignin matrix. Those hierarchical levels
required further investigation.
As mentioned in Section 2.1, the luffa sponge used in our experiments was obtained from pharmacies in Australia which was
sold as a bath sponge. There were two treatments in manufacturing
the bath sponge from natural luffa fruits which may inuence the
mechanical properties of luffa sponge, namely, bleaching and lateral squashing. Similar to other cellulose based natural bres such
as cotton [33], bleach would result in slight loss of mass so as to its
mechanical strength of untreated luffa sponge. The lateral
squashing would result in damage of the original luffa bres. The
experimental data and empirical formula from our experiment will
underestimate the strength of untreated luffa sponge material. The
detailed inuence of those pre-treatments will be investigated
further in our future work.
5. Conclusions

2
1

Fig. 12. Comparison with other cellular materials. (Strain rate for luffa sponge: 10 s ;
Expanded polypropylene [34]: 60 s
1; Balsa wood [35]: 3000 s
1; Alporas foam [22]:
10
3 to 102 s
1; Honeycombs [36]: for 10
3 s
1 and * for 102 s
1; others are quasistatic data [29]. The data are marked by its density in kg m
3).

The strain rate effect of the luffa sponge material was investigated in this paper by conducting experiments at different strain
rates on cylindrical specimens of the luffa sponge with a wide range

26

J. Shen et al. / International Journal of Impact Engineering 57 (2013) 17e26

of density. The mechanical properties of the luffa sponge material

at various strain rates were obtained at the macroscopic level. The
following conclusions can be drawn from our investigations.
(1) Compressive strength, plateau stress and specic energy absorption of luffa sponge material are all sensitive to the rate of
loading;
(2) Empirical formulae are obtained for compressive strength,
densication strain and specic energy absorption at various
strain rates at the macroscopic level;
(3) The dynamic enhancement for compressive strength is more
prominent than that for the plateau stress. The underlying
mechanism can be explained by the type II structure response
of luffa bres;
(4) The energy absorption capacity per unit mass at high strain
rates of luffa sponge is higher than that of many commonly used
metallic foams;
(5) Luffa sponge has the potential to be used as an alternative
sustainable material for various engineering applications such
as packaging, acoustic and vibration isolation, and impact energy absorption.
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