Estrategias mecánicas de las plantas arborescentes: Enseñanzas estructurales de los árboles

Abstract

Trees are the largest living beings that have ever lived on Earth, with more than one hundred meters high, masses of several thousand tons and ages of several thousand years. In order to achieve this, among other functional conditions, trees have to cope with all kinds of mechanical loads. Therefore, to meet these structural requirements, trees have wood, an exceptional material from a mechanical point of view, and offer a number of design strategies ranging from ensuring structural stability to provide adequate safety factor using a minimum amount of material, with consequent metabolic efficiency. In that sense, this paper presents the most important strategies of growth, anatomy and morphology that use the leading arborescent plants families, gymnosperms and angiosperms, highlighting the features of natural plant materials, which have a hierarchical organization, and in most cases are fiber-reinforced composite materials, materials with cellular structure, or both, such as wood.