Tiny yet tough: Maximizing the toughness of fiber-reinforced soft composites in the absence of a fiber-fracture mechanism

The toughness of composite materials is size dependent below a critical load transfer length (lT). Fiber-reinforced viscoelastic polymers are uniquely suited to study the size-limited regime because the lT of these soft composites can be as high as several centimeters, in contrast to traditional composites where lT is extremely small, allowing a large window for macroscale characterization. In this work, we elucidate the parameters that...