3D Printing of Flow-Inspired Anisotropic Patterns with Liquid Crystalline Polymers

Anisotropic materials formed by living organisms possess remarkable mechanical properties due to their intricate microstructure and directional freedom. In contrast, human-made materials face challenges in achieving similar levels of directionality due to material and manufacturability constraints. To overcome these limitations, an approach...

Spiral honeycomb microstructured bacterial cellulose for increased strength and toughness

Natural materials, such as nacre and silk, exhibit both high strength and toughness due to their hierarchical structures highly organized at the nano-, micro-, and macroscales. Bacterial cellulose (BC) presents a hierarchical fibril structure at the nanoscale. At the microscale, however, BC nanofibers are distributed randomly. Here, BC self...

Bio-inspiration from naturally healing tissues

In the course of evolution, load-bearing biological materials have generally not evolved towards perfection and maximum strength, but instead developed high defect tolerance and adaptability [1]. Adaption occurs at various levels, see figure 1. While evolution leads to adaptation of entire species, each individual has mechanisms which confer...

ICSHM 2013: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Self-Healing Materials, Ghent, Belgium, 16-20 June 2013

Symposium organised by Ghent University, Department of Structural Engineering and Delft University of Technology, Aerospace Structures & Materials. Materials play an extremely important role in our lives. These materials may be of a very different nature ranging from metals over concrete to polymers and composite materials. They all have in...

Biomimetic multi-scale damage immunity for construction materials: M4L project overview

This paper presents a vision of a sustainable and resilient built environment that is comprised of materials and structures that continually monitor, regulate, adapt and repair themselves without the need for external intervention. In this way, these self?healing materials and intelligent structures will significantly enhance durability and...