Biomimetic

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Biomimetic is the study and the way to gain inspiration from nature in order to find structures that are useful both in technology and design. By studying how evolution found solutions to change conditions in the environment, designers can be inspired to find solutions in the making of new products. Examples of evolutionary solutions that nature has created which later have been used in design and technologies are for example: the lotus leaf’s self-cleaning surface, humpback whales fins used as design for wings and swimsuits made as shark skin. Since nature automatically sorts out solutions or designs that do not work, it is a very good source to imitate. For designers, Biomimetic is about being inspired to find solutions to design problems. So far Biomimetic had the strongest impact among biologists and engineers but also for designers, it may be beneficial to have nature as a starting point in the creative work. There are numerous examples of solutions that nature has inspired, perhaps the most famous example is Velcro, which is designed as a seed pod. Even weather patterns have inspired various ventilation systems in buildings. The approach to take advantage of nature's designs and use Biomimetic creates solutions on how to study the way nature solves problems, which are destined to be solved. By taking the systems of nature and its many different conditions and the way it adapts into account, design processes can be harmonized with nature.

Janine Benyus coined the term Biomimicry (1997) in the book of the same name to describe a new bio-inspired innovation thinking.

Nature has over 3.8 billion years of successively testing that shows in the whole environment and the different conditions that exist on Earth. Nature has found, for example: solutions to the issue of energy, insulation, protection, and how one can with minimal resources live a healthy life. Janine believes that there is much to learn from nature, the more our society is mimics the natural world, the better the chance we will have in order to survive on this planet that we share with so many other forms of life.

When the Swiss engineer George de Mestral patted his dog after a hunting trip in the Alps in 1941, he discovered that the coat was full of burrs. When he looked closely at the burrs/thistles he saw that they were round and were spiny seed pods, he discovered that the key to its adhesive ability was in the small hooks at the tip of the tags. De Mestral began to wonder if you could not use the same principle for fastening clothing. A few decades later, his idea was to be a great success on the moon. George de Mestral invented Velcro. A product that made him a millionaire and who got its real commercial impact when NASA in the 1960s began using it in the astronauts' space suits, since neither the buttons nor zippers worked practically outside the atmosphere.

Frank Fish was on vacation in Boston in the early 1980s, when he saw a small statue of a blue shimmering humpback whale in a shop in Quincy Market. He wondered why the pectoral fins along the leading edge were covered with gnarled growths. Most whales and dolphins have completely smooth fins, and according to classical mechanics it is the leading edge of a fin or wing to be smooth in order to elicit the necessary lifting force. Most of course had not thought of the idea, but for Frank Fish, it was different. He was a specialist in the area, with a recent Ph.D. in zoology from Michigan State University added to his merits. His specialty was the animal's swimming ability, and he had just found his life's project.

Frank Fish's first thought was that it was simply wrong handcraft on the statue. But when he studied photographs of humpback whales he saw that the statue's knobby units were perfect shaped on the statue. Frank Fish now realized that he had probably found some of the answers to a riddle that had baffled biologists for decades: the humpback whales amazing maneuverability. Although an adult can have a body mass of up to 40 tons and reach over 15 feet in length, it can make extremely tight turns. Something that is noticeable when the humpback exercises the of many whales special hunting technique referred to as the “bubble method” by which they encloses krill and prey fish in the nets of bubbles as they blow out of the blowhole. The whales create an increasingly dense wall of these bubbles by circulating intensified over shoals, and when the bubbles then rise the whales can devour millions of captured prey in a single attack.

By making a model of a humpback whale fin and test it in a wind tunnel Fish discovered that the knobby units made the humpback whale able to make sharper turns without losing lift, and that they also dramatically reduced the risk of stall - an effect where the airflow over the wing is disturbed, forming eddies , which means that such aircraft can lose its lift and crash. Frank Fish, professor of biology lead The Liquid Life Laboratory in Pennsylvania, a department at West Chester University dedicated to research in animal hydrodynamics and how they move in water. Fish's research is among other things about dolphin fins. They are extremely effective because they constantly can change the shape of the fins in order to adapt themselves to the water resistance. Frequently rotating boat propellers are only optimally effective at a certain speed, while the dolphin is effective all the time. Fish is trying to create materials with the same properties for propellers.

Fish also runs the company Whale Power. The company develops rotor blades for wind turbines in the shape of whale flippers, which are both more efficient and quieter than normal smooth wings. The idea is that the technology will in future also be transferred on aircraft wings.

One of the first documented biomimics’ was Leonardo da Vinci, who was inspired by bird wings which shows in the drawings to his forst flying machines in the early 1500's. Drawings that later were used by the Wright brothers when they designed the first aircraft in the early 1900's. But it is only in recent decades that Biomimic has begun to form itself into a custom field. According to the laws of aerodynamics a bumblebee should not be able to fly, it has too small wings in proportion to its large body. But still, it manages to fly. To understand similar problems, physicists and biologists should cooperate, according to Frank Fish. It was as late as the end of the 1990s as a research team at Cambridge began to understand why bumblebees could fly at all. What they found was that the bumblebee uses a special wing technology that gives a vastly higher lift.

• http://www.andersrydell.se/artikel/315-naturens-geni ”Design för hållbar utveckling” Ann Thorpe, Raster Förlag Stockholm, 2007
• http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomimetikhttp://materialbiblioteket.se/tag/biomimetik/
• http://www.svid.se/Hallbarhetsguiden/Inspiration/Inspiratorer/Janine-Benyus/ http://www.biomimicryinstitute.org/about-us/