Biomimetic Design
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Biomimetic Design L. H. Shu* Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Definition Emulating and applying biological models, systems, and processes to solve design problems. Related and/or synonymous terms: bionics, biologically inspired design, biomimicry. Different from bioengineering, e.g., biomedical engineering and biomechanics, where engineering principles are used to solve problems in biology.
Introduction There are a growing number of researchers working on bio-inspired design. This entry summarizes and categorizes this work with emphasis on the author’s work in the area.
Directions of Information Transfer There are two main directions of information transfer in biomimetic design. Goel et al. (Helms et al. 2009; Vattam et al. 2010a) refer to them as (1) solution driven, where an interesting biological phenomenon inspires the search for potential applications, and (2) problem driven, where a given problem motivates the search for biological analogies that could help solve the problem. Other terminologies used include biology push versus technology pull, and top down versus bottom up. This entry focuses on the problemdriven/technology-pull direction.
Identifying Analogies Biological systems have long been cited as the source of inspiration for innovative designs, from VelcroTM to paints that enable the lotus effect. However, not often reported is how the specific source of inspiration was identified. Researchers in both biology and engineering design have recognized this need and the following main approaches to identify biological sources of inspiration: (1) ask biologists, (2) create and search databases, and (3) search biological text in natural-language format.
Ask Biologists One obvious way of identifying potential biological analogies for engineering problems is to ask biologists (Vincent et al. 2006). AskNature (http://www.asknature.org/), led by Janine Benyus (1997), provides a social network of biologists specifically for this purpose. The advantage of simply asking biologists is that the engineer, generally untrained in biology, does not have to search for and interpret the relevance and potential application of information that may be unfamiliar. The disadvantage of this approach is that one must have access to biologists. In addition, biologists may be biased toward their areas of expertise, rather than objectively recall and present a variety of phenomena as potential analogies.
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CIRP Encyclopedia of Production Engineering DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-35950-7_16812-1 # CIRP 2015
Develop Database An obvious approach to address the limitations of asking biologists directly is to attempt to capture their knowledge in databases. The advantages of databases include more focused search results. Frequently, the same keywords used to categorize biological phenomena and, often, past engineering solutions developed based on them, are presented as search keywords. Therefore, the “relevance” of information found is guaranteed since
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