The Design of Natural Materials and Structures

MAN HAS ALWAYS used nature as a source of inspiration for his engineering, both in design and process. The development of ideas within the area of intelligent materials, structures and systems is no exception. However, ideas from nature must themselves be used with intelligence and insight. There seem to be a few basic rules and requirements to which all materials made by animals and plants must conform if nature is to survive. There are also some neat tricks which nature can use and which we have yet to learn to manipulate to their full advan-tage. In this review a number of these rules and requirements are enumerated, il-lustrated and discussed. Taken together, they can maximise success in our at-tempts at biomimicry. A prime factor, which is continually overlooked, is that in order to make best use of the variety of designs in nature, one needs to know just how vast that variety is. The best way to get this information is to talk to a good biologist or nat-uralist who will have spent his life studying the &dquo;Infinite Varietie&dquo; of nature. It is an unfortunate fact that most people involved in the technology of imitating