OPEN ACCESS
Natural organisms often have multiple functions and multi-optimisation in a single component or mechanism. In addition, natural organisms are highly integrated assemblies. In contrast, human design has traditionally avoided multi-functioning in single components because of the difficulties this presents in the design process. Only in recent years has there been a trend towards multi-functioning in engineering components. The advantage of multi-functioning is that extremely high levels of performance can be achieved. This paper gives examples of multi-functioning and multi-optimisation in a bird flight feather and a bird display feather. In each case, the advantages of multi-functioning are explained and analogies with man-made design are given.
multi-functioning, multi-optimisation, shape factors
[1] Pahl, G. & Beitz, W., Engineering Design: A Systematic Approach, Springer-Verlag: London, p. 249, 1996.
[2] Ashby, M.F., Materials Selection in Mechanical Design, Pergamon Press: Oxford, 1992.
[3] Booker, J.D., Raines, M.&Swift, K.G., Designing Capable and Reliable Products, Butterworth Heinemann: Oxford, p. 257, 2001.
[4] Thompson, B.S., Environmentally-sensitive design: Leonardo WAS right! Materials and Design, 20, pp. 23–30, 1999.
[5] Thompson, D., On Growth and Form, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1961.
[6] King, A.S. & McLelland, J., Birds—Their structure and Form, Bailliere Tindall: London, p. 30, 1984.
[7] Burgess, S.C., Reliability and safety strategies in living organisms: potential for biomimicking. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Part E: Journal of Process Engineering, 216, pp. 1–13, 2002.
[8] Bejan, A., Shape and Structure, from Engineering to Nature, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2000.
[9] Weaver, P.M. & Ashby, F., The optimal selection of material and section-shape. Journal of Engineering Design, 7(2), pp. 129–150, 1996.
[10] French, M., Invention and Evolution, 2nd edn, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, p. 63, 1994.
[11] Vogel, S., Comparative Biomechanics, Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, pp. 310–312, 2003.
[12] Pang, J.W.C. & Bond, I.P., ‘Bleeding composites’—damage detection and self-repair using a biomimetic approach. Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, 36(2), pp. 183–188, 2004.
[13] Schmidt, W.F., Polymer composite keratin, US Patent No. SN 10/750.464, 31 December 2003.
[14] Zi, J., Yu, X., Li, Y., Hu, X., Xu, C., Wang, X., Liu, X. & Fu, R., Colouration strategies in peacock feathers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100(22), pp. 12576–12578, 2003.
[15] Mason, C.W., Structural colours in feathers II. Journal of Physical Chemistry, 27, pp. 416–417, 1923.
[16] Ershov, S., Kolchin, K. & Myszkowski, K., Rendering pearlescent appearance based on paint-composition modelling. Computer Graphics Forum, 20(3), 2001.
[17] Burgess, S.C. & Pasini, D., An analysis of the structural efficiency of trees. Journal of Engineering Design, 15(2), pp. 177–193, 2004.