Engineering
Design
Lecture 8
The Thinker – Auguste Rodin (1902)
Attribution Slide
• Presentation created by Dr David White for
educational purposes only.
• All images presented are credited to
source, taken from the public domain or
owned/created by author.
Inspiration From Nature
Image credit: http://www.leonardodavincisinventions.com/war-machines/leonardo-da-vincis-tank/ Image credit: http://www.inyamuakut.com/2011_05_01_archive.html
Step 1 - Identify
Develop a Design Brief of the human need
Develop a Design Brief with specifics about the problem
to be resolved.
Break down the Design Brief to identify the core of the
problems and the design specifications.
Identify the function you want your design to
accomplish: What do you want your design to do? (not
“what do you want to design?”).
Continue to ask why until you get to the bottom of the
problem.
Step 2 – Translate
Biologize the question
Ask the Design Brief from Nature's perspective
Translate the design function into functions carried out
in nature.
Ask “How does Nature do this function?”
“How does Nature NOT do this function?”
Reframe questions with additional key words.
Define the Habitat/Location
Climate conditions
Nutrient conditions
Social conditions
Temporal conditions Image credit: https://warkscol.wordpress.com/category/around-campus/
Step 3 - Observe
Look for the champions in nature who resolve your challenges
Find the best Natural Models to
answer your questions.
Consider Literal and Metaphorical.
Find champion adapters by asking
“whose survival depends on this?”
Find organisms that are most
challenged by the problem you are
trying to solve, but are unfazed by it.
Image credit: http://dtalk.us/facts-about-bats-bats-in.html
Look to the extremes of the habitat
Turn the problem inside out and on its head.
Open discussions with Biologists and specialists in the
field.
Step 4 - Abstract
Find the repeating patterns and processes within nature that achieve success
Create taxonomy of life’s strategies.
Select the champions with the most relevant
strategies to your particular design challenge.
Abstract from this list the
repeating successes and
principles that achieve this
success.
Image credit: www. www.sharenator.com
Step 5 - Apply
Develop ideas and solutions based on the natural models
Develop concepts and ideas that apply the lessons from your Natural teachers.
Look into applying these lessons as deep as possible in your designs.
Mimicking Form
Find out details of the morphology.
Understand scale effects.
Image credit: www. liight.com.au
Consider influencing factors on the effectiveness of the
form for the organism.
Consider ways in which you might deepen the
conversation to also mimic process and/or ecosystem.
Step – 5 Apply
Develop ideas and solutions based on the natural models
Develop concepts and ideas that apply the lessons from your Natural teachers.
Look into applying these lessons as deep as possible in your designs.
Mimicking Function
find out details of the biological process.
Understand scale effects.
Consider influencing factors on the effectiveness of the
process for the organism.
Consider ways in which you might deepen the
conversation to also mimic the ecosystem. Image credit: www. moziru.com
Step 5 - Apply
Develop ideas and solutions based on the natural models
Develop concepts and ideas that apply the lessons from your Natural teachers.
Look into applying these lessons as deep as possible in your designs.
Mimicking Ecosystem
Image credit: www.artigosobre.com
Find out details of the biological
process.
Understand scale effects.
Consider influencing factors on the effectiveness of the
process for the organism.
Step 6 - Evaluate
Compare your ideas to Life’s Principles, the
successful principles of nature.
Evaluate your design solution against Life’s Principles .
Develop appropriate questions from Life’s Principles and continue
to question your solution.
Identify further ways to improve your design and develop new
questions to explore.
Questions may now be about the refinement of the concept:
•Packaging, Manufacture, Marketing, Transport
•New Products - additions, refinement etc...
Image credit: www.natureinspireus.wordpress.com
Inspiration from nature - Velcro
Image credit: www.engr.sjsu.edu
George de Mestral 1948
Through the microscope he saw all the small hooks that enabled the seed-
bearing burr to cling so viciously to the tiny loops in the fabric of his pants.
"I will design a unique, two-sided fastener, one side with stiff hooks like the
burrs and the other side with soft loops like the fabric of my pants. I will call
my invention 'velcro' a combination of the word velour and crochet. It will
rival the zipper in its ability to fasten.“
This finished the design, patented in 1955. The inventor formed Velcro
Industries to manufacture his invention. Mestral was selling over sixty
million yards of Velcro per year.
Inspiration from nature – Gecko Tape
Inspired by the lizard’s ability to climb
vertical surfaces and even upside down.
Gecko tape is an adhesive which uses weak
intermolecular attractive forces to be super
sticky at one moment and not at the next.
Adhesive mimics the setae on the bottom of
the gecko’s feet.
This material was integrated into a robot
gecko at stanford university named
‘stickybot’ to demonstrate the tape’s sticking
ability.
Image credit: http://www.roboticsnedir.com/
Shinkansen Bullet Train
The first 200 mph trains had one small problem: noise. every time
the train came out of a tunnel, it would produce an extremely
loud bang because of the change in air pressure.
The answer was found in the kingfisher, which dives from air into
water with little splashing.
Image credit: www.neublack.com
Image credit: www.flickr.com
Mercedes-Benz Bionic Concept Vehicle
The Ostrancion Cubicus (Boxfish) has a rather large body, but is able to swim
very fast because of its low co-efficient of drag and rigid exoskeleton.
The final design had an unusual form that looked like a boxfish and after
testing proved to have one of the lowest co-efficient of drag ever tested.
Image credit: www.flickr.com Image credit: www.neublack.com
Eastgate Centre
The Eastgate centre office complex was modelled after the structure of a
termite mound because of their ability to self-cool.
Reduced heating and cooling energy by 90% when compared to buildings of
similar size.
Image credit: www.digitaltrends.com
Entropy Carpet
Mimicking the randomness of
colours and patterns found on the
forest floor.
Design suits a modular carpet
which embraces randomness and
integrates it into its design.
Makes it very easy to change
pieces of the carpet without
noticing a difference.
Image credit: www.interfaceflooring.com
Whale Power
An aerodynamic study of the ridges on a whale's flipper, known as
tubercles, found that they significantly helped prevent stall, a
combination of drag and lost lift.
Whale-inspired prototypes have doubled the product’s
performance at speeds of up to 17 miles per hour, reducing drag
and helping create more efficient turbines.
Image credit: www.technologyreview.com
Lotus Effect
Lotus leaves manage to remain free of contaminants without using detergents.
leaves possess a field of small bumps and waxy crystals which force water to
ball up.
Dirt molecules are raised up by the bumps and easily picked up by the water
drops.
applying this to products such as exterior paint and in new materials such as
textiles, wood and glass. Image credit: www.simplyscience.ch
Image credit: flickrhivemind.net
Shark Skin
Through its ingenious design,
shark skin reduces friction drag
and auto-cleaning ecto-parasites
from their surface.
Boat manufacturers have
Image credit: www.taringa.net
recently taken an interest in how
sharks achieve their unimpeded
movement through water both
because friction drag and the
attachment of organisms on a
ship’s hull are major sources of
energy inefficiency.
Image credit: www.naturavox.fr
Moth Eyes
Image credit: www.asknature.org
The outer surfaces of moth corneal lenses are covered with a
regular pattern of conical protuberances, which reduce light
reflection.
These unique structures help moths evade detection by predators
in moonlight and maximize light capture for seeing in the dark.
Moth-eye inspired anti-reflective coatings that demonstrate high-
performance over large band widths at low fabrication cost have
recently been developed for solar panels, with many other
potential products applications.
Toucan Beak
Despite its large size, the toucan beak comprises
only one twentieth the bird’s mass.
The beak’s solid outer shell sandwiches within it
a closed-cell, foam-like structure made of struts
which, together with thin protein membranes,
Image credit: www.marcatalar.com
enclose variably shaped air spaces.
Material designs inspired by the structure of the toucan beak
could offer the properties of low weight with high stiffness and
strength, as well as good energy absorption capacity and
insulation value.
Thorny
Devil
Image credit: www.inhabitat.com
Grooves on spikes of thorny devil lizard provide drinking water by
drawing condensed dew to its mouth by capillary action.
Passive collection and distribution systems of naturally distilled
water could help provide clean water supplies to the 1 billion
people estimated to lack this vital resource, reduce the energy
consumption required in collecting and transporting water by
pump action and provide a variety of other inexpensive
technological solutions such as managing heat through
evaporative cooling systems.
Barriers to idea generation
Environmental barriers
Creative idea generation needs supportive
environment
Emotional barriers
Fear of rejection/making a fool of oneself
Describe the
unseen object
(cat in the bag) Image credit: www.easyplr.com
