Abstract
Biological structures show a great variety of deployment mechanisms for: (i) unfolding from buds, as in petals or in leaves, e.g. beech and hornbeam; (ii) growth in complex 3-dimensional patterns as can be seen in buds of thistles or in fructifications such as pine cones; (iii) appendages for locomotion (swimming, walking, jumping, running or flying, as exemplified in fins, legs and the wings of birds, bats or insects such as beetles (Coleoptera); (iv) feeding or defence, exemplified by the uncoiling proboscis or feeding tube of butterflies and moths, ant the stinging tubule of the specialized capsule in jellyfish and other members of the phylum Cnidaria which uncoils and everts in a fraction of a second.
From a technical point of view these natural deployment patterns show elastic elements and great freedom in their kinematics. At the same time, however, the movements seem to be so well controlled that safe, non-jamming deployment and, in many cases, reversed collapsing as well, are readily performed. For this reason, research on these mechanisms could inspire new concepts for technical structures and help solve the problems of deformations due to the mass of the deployment device which can cause significant friction in the articulations resulting in a high risk of jamming.
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Kresling, B. (2000). Coupled Mechanisms in Biological Deployable Structures. In: Pellegrino, S., Guest, S.D. (eds) IUTAM-IASS Symposium on Deployable Structures: Theory and Applications. Solid Mechanics and Its Applications, vol 80. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9514-8_25
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9514-8_25
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