Related papers: Fungal architecture
Biological composites offer self-healing properties, biocompatibility, high responsivity to external stimuli, and multifunctionality, due, in part, to their complex, hierarchical microstructure. Such materials can be inexpensively grown,…
Structural cellular materials in nature, such as wood, trabecular bone, corals, and dentin combine complex biological functions with structural roles, such as skeletal support and impact protection1,2. They feature complex structural…
The design of complex materials and the formation of specific patterns often arise from the properties of the individual building blocks. In this respect, colloidal systems offer a unique opportunity because nowadays they can be synthesized…
The global increase in materials consumption calls for innovative materials, with tailored performance and multi-functionality, that are environmentally sustainable. Composites from renewable resources offer solutions to fulfil these…
A remarkable property of nastic, shape changing plants is their complete fusion between actuators and structure. This is achieved by combining a large number of cells whose geometry, internal pressures and material properties are optimized…
The present work investigates environmental effects on the growth of fungal colonies of P. vitreus by using a lattice-free discrete modelling approach called FGM (Fuhr et al. (2010), arXiv:1101.1747), in which hyphae and nutrients are…
An overall objective of energy efficiency in the built environment is to improve building and systems performances in terms of durability, comfort and economics. In order to predict, improve and meet a certain set of performance…
Here we develop an approach to bio-structural robustness integrated with structure-function relationship in a unified conceptual and methodological framework, and envision its study using adequate computational and experimental methods. To…
While it seems counterintuitive to think of degradation within an operating device as beneficial, one may argue that when rationally designed, the controlled breakdown of materials can be harnessed for specific functions. To apply this…
Energy absorbing materials, like foams used in protective equipment, are able to undergo large deformations under low stresses, reducing the incoming stress wave below an injury or damage threshold. They are typically effective in absorbing…
Understanding how growth induces form is a longstanding biological question. Many studies concentrated on the shapes of plant cells, fungi or bacteria. Some others have shown the importance of the mechanical properties of bacterial walls…
How motile bacteria move near a surface is a problem of fundamental biophysical interest and is key to the emergence of several phenomena of biological, ecological and medical relevance, including biofilm formation. Solid boundaries can…
Soft stretchable materials are key for arising technologies such as stretchable electronics or batteries, smart textiles, biomedical devices, tissue engineering and soft robotics. Recent attempts to design such materials, via e.g.…
Many promising approaches for designing interactions of synthetic materials with light involve solid optical monocrystals and nanofabricated photonic crystal structures with spatially periodic variations of refractive index. Although their…
The demand for petroleum dependent chemicals and materials has been increasing despite the dwindling of their fossil resources. As the dead-end of petroleum based industry has started to appear, today's modern society has to implement…
Nature hosts a wealth of materials showcasing intricate structures intertwining order, disorder, and hierarchy, delivering resilient multifunctionality surpassing perfect crystals or simplistic disordered materials. The engineering of such…
Filamentous cyanobacteria, forming long strands of connected cells, are one of the earliest and most successful forms of life on Earth. They exhibit self-organised behaviour, forming large-scale patterns in structures like biomats and…
This paper presents a method for generating floor plans for structures in Minecraft (Mojang 2009). Given a 3D space, it will auto-generate a building to fill that space using a combination of constrained growth and cellular automata. The…
In living systems, we often see the emergence of the ingredients necessary for computation -- the capacity for information transmission, storage, and modification -- begging the question of how we may exploit or imitate such biological…
There is a growing call for greater amounts of increasingly agile computational power for edge and cloud infrastructure to serve the computationally complex needs of ubiquitous computing devices. Thus, an important challenge is addressing…