Biomechanics and functional morphology of plants-inspiration for biomimetic materials and structures

Abstract

During the last decades, biomimetics has attracted increasing attention as well from basic and applied research as from various fields of industry. Biomimetics has a high innovation potential and offers the possibility for the development of sus- tainable technical products and production chains. Novel sophisticated methods for quantitatively analyzing and simulating the form-structure-function relationship on various hierarchical levels allow new fascinating insights into multi-scale mechanics and other functional parameter spaces of biological materials systems. On the other hand, new production methods enable for the first time the transfer of many out- standing properties of the biological role models into innovative biomimetic products at reasonable costs. Presented examples of biomimetic developments and products inspired by plants include branched and unbranched fiber-reinforced lightweight composite materials, structural materials with a high energy dissipation capacity as fiber-reinforced graded foams and compound materials, solutions for elastic archi- tecture as the biomimetic façade-shading systems Flectofin(r) and Flectofold inspired by the bird of paradise flower and the waterwheel plant, respectively. Finally, a short overview of bioinspired self-repairing materials is given and a short discussion of the potential of biomimetic products to contribute to sustainable material development is presented.