Design in Nature

Abstract

Methods of structure selection that have evolved in nature to achieve efficient survival of a species can provide valuable guidance to engineers designing structures or components. The principle of adaptive growth which biological structures use to minimise stress concentrations is discussed with reference to the different priorities of trees and mammalian bones. These criteria have been incorporated into a computer aided optimisation design procedure and into the soft kill option, which provides a means of eliminating non-load carrying areas from structures. Both of these techniques have found application in industry. Another procedure, computer aided internal optimisation, which attempts to optimise the performance of composite materials by aligning the fibre distribution with the stress flow, again mimicking the structure of trees, is still in the development stage. Finally, the ethical consequences of adopting such a severe strategy of natural selection with the low safety factors this implies are discussed. This theme is developed with reference to a visual assessment technique developed to estimate the likelihood that a given tree will fall.