Nature struts its stuff
Some of the latest material fabrication ideas come naturally – they were originally prototyped by nature!
Pultruding composite hollow tubular struts – with unfilled passages in the walls – are proving a big plus in the fabrication of extremely light, but stiff, struts.
While many biological structures are almost impossibly complicated to fabricate, advanced manufacturing techniques such as pultrusion and additive methods now permit manufacture at a reasonable cost.
Biologically inspired constructions were just one of the themes at the recent Biological Approaches for Engineering conference, organised by the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton.
And it was here that Dr Markus Milwich, from the Institute of Textile Technology and Process Engineering, Denkendorf, unveiled a plant-inspired strut that he had actually made out of fibre-reinforced epoxy. Formula 1 and aerospace are obvious applications for the struts, but there are many others.