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A special issue of Biomimetics (ISSN 2313-7673).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2019) | Viewed by 71479

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Chris Rudd

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Guest Editor

Faculty of Engineering, James Cook University, Singapore
Interests: fibre reinforced composite materials

Prof. Dr. Hang Sun

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Co-Guest Editor

Key Laboratory of Bionic Engineering (Ministry of Education), College of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun 130022, Jilin, China
Interests: bionic nanomaterials

Prof. Dr. Li Guo

E-Mail Website
Co-Guest Editor

College of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun 130022, China
Interests: agricultural air pollution; monitoring of agricultural environment; mitigation and filtration of agricultural pollutants; remote sensing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The 6th International Conference of Bionic Engineering (ICBE2019) will be held on 23–26 September 2019 in Changchun, China, and hosted by the General Chair Professor Luquan Ren from Jilin University, who is also the Standing Vice-President of the International Society of Bionic Engineering (ISBE) and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This conference aims to establish a closer relationship between scientists and engineers worldwide in the field of bionic engineering, providing new ideas and accomplishments for the practice of bio-inspired design, manufacture, management, and application, to offer innovative solutions for meeting the demand of the rapid advancement of science and technology. This conference has received about 400 abstracts and 107 full papers. From the contributed papers, eighteen papers have been selected for this Special Issue. The scope of selected papers includes machinery, design, materials, functional surfaces, management, mobility, walking, and locomotion, all inspired by Nature. The selection of the papers for this Special Issue is based on quality criteria. They should reflect the topics in bionic engineering highlighted during the conference and the selected papers will contain contributions that are of interest to readers.

As Julian Vincent, the president of ISBE, says on the website of ISBE: "Let us share our responsibility to change our world for the better".

Prof. Dr. Chris Rudd
Prof. Dr. Hang Sun
Prof. Dr. Li Guo
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Biomimetics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (11 papers)

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Research

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9 pages, 7010 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Impact of a Flexible Stern on Canoe Boat Maneuverability and Speed

by Anna Theresia Stadler, Martin Schönauer, Roozbeh Aslani, Werner Baumgartner and Tillmann Philippi

Biomimetics 2020, 5(1), 7; https://doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics5010007 - 17 Feb 2020

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3095

Abstract

Paddle boats like canoes and kayaks draw a sinusoidal path when a linear movement is intended. The reason for this behavior is that each paddle stroke induces a lateral movement of the boat. In this study, we sought to reduce the so-called yawing motion. We therefore replaced the stiff stern by a flexible stern, which is based on the Fin Ray Effect^®. We built down-scaled boat models and tested them in a water channel. The similarities between experimental and original setup were evaluated by means of a dimensional analysis. (Thermoplastic) elastomers with various flexibility were used for the stern construction. In the experiments conducted in the water channel, we determined the forces acting on the boat with different stern models. The results reveal that the flexible stern induced a torque counteracting the boat’s deflection, while the stiff stern caused a torque enhancing it. A paddle boat with a flexible stern could hence be a promising new method to reduce the boat’s yawing movement. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from ICBE2019)

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8 pages, 4754 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Application of Bionic Technologies on the Fracturing Plug

by Lin Chen, Ran Wei, Songbo Wei and Xinzhong Wang

Biomimetics 2019, 4(4), 78; https://doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics4040078 - 05 Dec 2019

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2691

Abstract

The dissolvable bridge plug is one of the most important tools for multi-stage hydraulic fracturing in the field of oil/gas development. The plug provides zonal isolation to realize staged stimulation and, after fracturing, the plug is fully dissolved in produced liquids. A bionic surface was introduced to improve the performance of the plug. Surface dimples in the micron dimension were prepared on the dissolvable materials of the plug. The experimental results showed that the surface dimples changed the hydrophilic and hydrophobic properties of the dissolvable materials. The dissolution rate has a great relation with the parameters of the dimples and can be controlled by choosing the dimples’ parameters to some degree. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from ICBE2019)

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23 pages, 4227 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Biomimetic Groundwork for Thermal Exchange Structures Inspired by Plant Leaf Design

by Ariana I. K. S. Rupp and Petra Gruber

Biomimetics 2019, 4(4), 75; https://doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics4040075 - 27 Nov 2019

Cited by 21 | Viewed by 8378

Abstract

Geometry is a determining factor for thermal performance in both biological and technical systems. While biology has inspired thermal design before, biomimetic translation of leaf morphology into structural aspects of heat exchangers remains largely unaddressed. One determinant of plant thermal endurance against environmental exposure is leaf shape, which modulates the leaf boundary layer, transpiration, evaporative cooling, and convective exchange. Here, we lay the research groundwork for the extraction of design principles from leaf shape relations to heat and mass transfer. Leaf role models were identified from an extensive literature review on environmentally sensitive morphology patterns and shape-dependent exchange. Addressing canopy sun–shade dimorphism, sun leaves collected from multiple oak species exceeded significantly in margin extension and shape dissection. Abstracted geometries (i.e., elongated; with finely toothed edges; with few large-scale teeth) were explored with paper models of the same surface area in a controlled environment of minimal airflow, which is more likely to induce leaf thermal stress. For two model characteristic dimensions, evaporation rates were significantly faster for the dissected geometries. Shape-driven transfer enhancements were higher for the smaller models, and finely toothed edges reached local cooling up to 10 °C below air temperature. This investigation breaks new ground for solution-based biomimetics to inform the design of evaporation-assisted and passively enhanced thermal systems. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from ICBE2019)

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19 pages, 32680 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Development of Mixed Flow Fans with Bio-Inspired Grooves

by Jinxin Wang, Toshiyuki Nakata and Hao Liu

Biomimetics 2019, 4(4), 72; https://doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics4040072 - 18 Oct 2019

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 6615

Abstract

Mixed flow fan is a kind of widely used turbomachine, which has faced problems of further performance improvement in traditional design methods in recent decades. Inspired by the microgrooves such as riblets and denticles on bird feathers and shark skins, we here propose biomimetic designs of various blades with the bio-inspired grooves, aiming at the improvement of the aeroacoustic performance. Based on a systematic study with computational fluid dynamic analyses, we found that these designs had the potential in noise suppression even with macroscopic grooves. Our best design can suppress turbulence kinetic energy by approximately 38% at the blade leading edge with aerodynamic efficiency loss of only 0.3 percentage points. This improvement is achieved by passive flow control. The vortical structures are changed in a favorable way at the leading edge due to the grooves. We believe that these biomimetic designs could provide a promising future of enhancing the performance of mixed flow fans by making grooves of ideal flow passages on the suction faces of blades in accord with the theory of pump design. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from ICBE2019)

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11 pages, 5098 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Study on the Heat Reduction Effect of Biomimetic Unidirectional Transporting Channels Inspired by Nepenthes alata

by Yixuan Zhang, Deyuan Zhang, Dongyue Wang and Xiangyu Zhang

Biomimetics 2019, 4(4), 70; https://doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics4040070 - 15 Oct 2019

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3465

Abstract

Heat control has been a momentous problem in engineering areas which include manufacturing, aeronautics, microchips and so forth for a considerable amount of time. The control of material for thermal deformation, effective cooling are the key components of the aero crafts and compactly laid out microchips are urgently needed for improvement. In a micro-scale, researchers are mainly focused on the mechanism, design, improvement and heat transfer of straight channels other than developing other types of channels. A previous study on the carnivorous plant, Nepenthes alata, indicates that the water can be transported continuously and directionally on the surface of the rim of the pitcher because of its multi-scale structures. Meanwhile, the transporting speed is much higher than what was thought previously. Inspired by this unique phenomenon, the heat management ability of this biological micro channel is investigated in this research. Firstly, based on existing studies, the features of the biological channels are extracted. Then, the unidirectional channels are designed and fabricated by elliptical vibration cutting accordingly. The experimental platform for thermal control was established consequently. Both bio-inspired and straight triangular channels of the same depth and width were set for comparison. Through the comparative experiments, it is concluded preliminarily that the critical point of heat transfer performance of the two channels exists, and the biomimetic structure can improve and strengthen the cooling effects at a large flow rate because of the unique geometric structure. The temperature reduction of the bio-inspired channels can be increased by up to 84 percent compared with straight channels in a single experiment when heated up to 150 centigrade. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from ICBE2019)

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19 pages, 3081 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Design of a Bio-Inspired Anti-Erosion Structure for a Water Hydraulic Valve Core: An Experimental Study

by Haihang Wang, He Xu, Yonghui Zhang, Siqing Chen, Zitong Zhao and Junlong Chen

Biomimetics 2019, 4(3), 63; https://doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics4030063 - 06 Sep 2019

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 5578

Abstract

Animals and plants have numerous active protections for adapting to the complex and severe living environments, providing endless inspiration for extending the service life of materials and machines. Conch, a marine animal living near the coast and chronically suffering from the erosion of sand in water, has adapted to the condition through its anti-erosion conch shell. Romanesco broccoli, a plant whose inflorescence is self-similar in character, has a natural fractal bud’s form. Coupling the convex domes on the conch shell and the fractal structure of Romanesco broccoli, a novel valve core structure of a water hydraulic valve was designed in this paper to improve the particle erosion resistance and valve core’s service life. Three models were built to compare the effect among the normal structure, bionic structure, and multi-source coupling bionic structures, and were coined using 3D printing technology. A 3D printed water hydraulic valve was manufactured to simulate the working condition of a valve core under sand erosion in water flow, and capture the experimental videos of the two-phase flow. Furthermore, based on the water hydraulic platform and one-camera-six-mirror 3D imaging subsystem, the experiment system was established and used to compare the performance of the three different valve cores. As a result, the results showed that the coupling bionic structure could effectively improve the anti-erosion property of the valve core and protect the sealing face on the valve core from wear. This paper presents a novel way of combining advantages from both animal (function bionic) and plant (shape bionic) in one component design. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from ICBE2019)

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11 pages, 2882 KiB

Open AccessCommunication

Application of Finite Element Analysis in Modeling of Bionic Harrowing Discs

by Benard Chirende, Jian Qiao Li and Wonder Vheremu

Biomimetics 2019, 4(3), 61; https://doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics4030061 - 03 Sep 2019

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3230

Abstract

Ansys software was used to carry out three-dimensional finite element analysis (FEA) for biomimetic design of harrowing discs based on the body surface morphology of soil burrowing animals like dung beetle (Dicranocara deschodt) which have non-smooth units such as convex domes and concave dips. The main objective was to find out the effects of different biomimetic surface designs on reducing soil resistance hence the horizontal force acting on the harrowing disc during soil deformation was determined. In this FEA, soil deformation was based on the Drucker–Prager elastic–perfectly plastic model which was applied only at the lowest disc harrowing speed of 4.4 km/h which is within the limits of model. The material non-linearity of soil was addressed using an incremental technique and inside each step, the Newton–Raphson iteration method was utilized. The model results were analyzed and then summation of horizontal forces acting on the soil-disc interface was also done. An experiment was then conducted in an indoor soil bin to validate the FEA results. The FEA results are generally in agreement with those of the indoor experiment with a difference of less than or equal to the acceptable 10% with an average difference of 4%. Overall, convex bionic units gave the highest resistance reduction of 19.5% from 1526.87 N to 1228.38 N compared to concave bionic units. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from ICBE2019)

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13 pages, 4279 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Experimental Study on a “Snake-Type” Vibration Cutting Method for Cutting Force and Cutting Heat Reductions

by Xiangyu Zhang, Zhenlong Peng and Deyuan Zhang

Biomimetics 2019, 4(3), 57; https://doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics4030057 - 13 Aug 2019

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3385

Abstract

Cutting is the foundation of manufacturing in industry. The main cutting objects include metals, ceramics, glasses, compositions, and even biological materials such as tissues and bones. The special properties of each material such as hardness, ductility, brittleness, and heat conductivity lead to either a large cutting force or a high cutting temperature. Both of these factors result in poor machinability due to rapid tool wear or break or unsatisfactory surface integrity of the material finishing surface using the conventional cutting (CC, conventional cutting) types. In nature, snakes have their own way of reducing heat accumulation on their body when moving on the hot desert surface. They move forward along an “S”-type path, so that the bottom of their body separates from the desert intermittently. In this way, the separation interval both reduces the cutting heat accumulations and effectively achieves cooling by allowing the air to go through. In addition, the acceleration of Odontomachus monticola’s two mandibles when striking a target can reach 71,730 g m/s² within 180 ms, which can easily break the target surface by the transient huge impact. Therefore, based on a snake’s motion on the desert surface and Odontomachus monticola’s striking on the target surface, respectively, an ultrasonic-frequency intermittent cutting method, also called “snake-type” vibration cutting (SVC, snake-type vibration cutting), was proposed in this study. First, its bionic kinematics were analyzed, then the SVC system’s design was introduced. Finally, cutting experiments were conducted on a common and typical difficult-to-cut material, namely titanium alloys. Cutting force, cutting temperature, and the surface integrity of the material finishing surface were measured, respectively. The results demonstrated that, compared to conventional cutting methods, SVC achieved a maximum of 50% and 30% reductions of cutting force and cutting temperature, respectively. Moreover, the surface integrity was improved both in surface roughness and residual stress state. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from ICBE2019)

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20 pages, 13387 KiB

Open AccessArticle

What Does a Hand-Over Tell?—Individuality of Short Motion Sequences

by Holger H. Bekemeier, Jonathan W. Maycock and Helge J. Ritter

Biomimetics 2019, 4(3), 55; https://doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics4030055 - 07 Aug 2019

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3309

Abstract

How much information with regard to identity and further individual participant
characteristics are revealed by relatively short spatio-temporal motion trajectories of a person?
We study this question by selecting a set of individual participant characteristics and analysing
motion captured trajectories of an exemplary class of familiar movements, namely handover of an
object to another person. The experiment is performed with different participants under different,
predefined conditions. A selection of participant characteristics, such as the Big Five personality
traits, gender, weight, or sportiness, are assessed and we analyse the impact of the three factor groups
“participant identity”, “participant characteristics”, and “experimental conditions” on the observed
hand trajectories. The participants’ movements are recorded via optical marker-based hand motion
capture. One participant, the giver, hands over an object to the receiver. The resulting time courses of
three-dimensional positions of markers are analysed. Multidimensional scaling is used to project
trajectories to points in a dimension-reduced feature space. Supervised learning is also applied.
We find that “participant identity” seems to have the highest correlation with the trajectories, with
factor group “experimental conditions” ranking second. On the other hand, it is not possible to find a
correlation between the “participant characteristics” and the hand trajectory features. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from ICBE2019)

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7 pages, 3769 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Tribology Performance of Surface Texturing Plunger

by Songbo Wei, Hongfei Shang, Chenglong Liao, Junyuan Huang and Bairu Shi

Biomimetics 2019, 4(3), 54; https://doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics4030054 - 05 Aug 2019

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3333

Abstract

Plunger pumps are widely used in oil pumping units around the world. The water content of the wellbore is increasing along with the development progress, so the lubricating capacity of the well fluids between the plunger and barrel is decreasing correspondingly. Commonly, the substrate material of the plunger and barrel are stainless steel, and the plunger surface is usually covered with nickel-based coating. Therefore, the performance of the plunger and barrel has been affected due to poor lubrication and eccentric wear. Non-smooth surfaces have been proven to improve the tribology performance in many cases. A surface texturing plunger covered with specific dimples has been prepared by using laser surface texturing technology. The morphology of the surface texturing plunger was characterized and analyzed. The tribology performance of surface texturing plunger samples was tested using standard friction and wear test machines with oil and water lubrication, respectively. The results indicated that surface texturing could effectively reduce the coefficient of friction, and the wear resistance of the surface textured samples has been improved to some extent. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from ICBE2019)

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Review

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20 pages, 4374 KiB

Open AccessReview

The Spine: A Strong, Stable, and Flexible Structure with Biomimetics Potential

by Fabio Galbusera and Tito Bassani

Biomimetics 2019, 4(3), 60; https://doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics4030060 - 30 Aug 2019

Cited by 29 | Viewed by 27770

Abstract

From its first appearance in early vertebrates, the spine evolved the function of protecting the spinal cord, avoiding excessive straining during body motion. Its stiffness and strength provided the basis for the development of the axial skeleton as the mechanical support of later animals, especially those which moved to the terrestrial environment where gravity loads are not alleviated by the buoyant force of water. In tetrapods, the functions of the spine can be summarized as follows: protecting the spinal cord; supporting the weight of the body, transmitting it to the ground through the limbs; allowing the motion of the trunk, through to its flexibility; providing robust origins and insertions to the muscles of trunk and limbs. This narrative review provides a brief perspective on the development of the spine in vertebrates, first from an evolutionary, and then from an embryological point of view. The paper describes functions and the shape of the spine throughout the whole evolution of vertebrates and vertebrate embryos, from primordial jawless fish to extant animals such as birds and humans, highlighting its fundamental features such as strength, stability, and flexibility, which gives it huge potential as a basis for bio-inspired technologies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from ICBE2019)

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